


30 Days

by Lauand



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Kapitel era, M/M, Plot, Schwarz - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 23:11:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 32,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20125402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauand/pseuds/Lauand
Summary: Schuldig fucks up. He has 30 days to fix it.





	1. 30

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2011 for the Weiss_Kreuzmas LJ exchange. I can't really start to thank Avierra for all the help she has offered me with this. I want everyone to know that this fic wouldn't be here today if it weren't for her. Words fail me. I touched this last, any remaining mistake is my own. I also wanted to thank the mods of the LJ comm, midnitemaraud_r and red_squared for their enormous patience with me, extending my deadline once and again and being as helpful as they could. And, of course, I wouldn't have ever tried to write a plot-driven story without nuraya's prompt. Sorry for the lengthy notes, I felt it necessary to thank all the people who have made this fic possible.

**30.**

There was a very particular sensation you felt when the sudden realization of having fucked up big time hit you full force. It started somewhere inside your trunk, your chest, your stomach, half and half... it was difficult to pinpoint. It was like your hairs were rising on your guts giving you inner goosebumps. Very ominous, materially impossible goosebumps. Then it spread. And you ended up not being sure it was cold or heat you were feeling when suddenly you had no weight because your entire mass had turned into fear and denial.  
  
"It can't be..."  
  
It was very much like being a living, mute pipe-organ. No sound, all sinister vibration.  
  
Schuldig hated that sensation on the occasions he felt it. He looked at the man lying on the bed.  
  
Schuldig hated that sensation now.  
  
The voice startled him. How much more could he screw up?  
  
"...Schuldig?"  
  
"Shh..." he hushed. It's never difficult to push a suggestion to a mind that's only partially awake, "...sleep on."  
  
It shouldn't have been so surprising, then, when Crawford obeyed. But it was. Schuldig kept still for a while. His palms were sweaty, alarm tingling on every fiber. Finally, he got up and went out of the room without bothering to wipe the encounter from Crawford's hazy mind.


	2. 29

**29.**

Schuldig stared at the ceiling so hard that he expected to drill a hole in it anytime now. It was too soon to try and take another look. Patience was not his strong point, though. He forced himself to blink. All day long, all of last night, he had tried to find the catch, to no avail. It was no trick, it just wasn't there anymore. It should be like those occasions when you couldn't find a pen you were sure you had left on the table and, after a while, you realize you were holding it in your hand. Only, the pen wasn't there. Not on the table, not in the hand. No pen.

Schuldig blinked again.

But the thing was that he was sure to have left it there. Hidden, sure, but there. He had done it a gazillion times before. And Schuldig didn't make mistakes. Never. Not in relation to...

_"My name's Schuldig."_

_"That is not truly a name."_

_"My name's Schuldig."_

He suppressed the useless memory. This was not the time. That had been different. That had been intentional. He didn't make mistakes.

Once again, Schuldig went over what had happened three days ago. Everything had gone smoothly, perfectly even. Then Crawford had gone and come back. And last night, suddenly, it wasn't there anymore. It wasn't there.

He forgot to blink.

He didn't know what to do.

It was driving him crazy.


	3. 28

**28.**

"I won't do your dishes, Schuldig."

"Aww, come on, and why ever not? It's not as if you actually get your hands dirty or anything."

Nagi finished drying his glass and floated it to the cupboard. He then closed its door. All without getting up from his place at the kitchen table.

"It's a matter of principle. You don't work for free, either," Nagi reminded him.

Schuldig pouted.

"You're a bad person, Naoe-san."

"Yes," Nagi agreed.

The sound of regular, firm footsteps preceded the appearance of a Crawford, who was just adjusting his tie.

"Schuldig, get the car. Farfarello is in trouble," he said.

With a smirk, Schuldig got up.

"See?" he cheerfully remarked. "I'm cleaning up after Farfarello. I can't see why you won't clean up after me."

Crawford called his name again, this time from the hall.

Schuldig's smirk vacillated for less than a second before he went to get his coat and keys.

\------------

The ceiling hadn't changed much in the last 16 hours, he had to admit. But at least some things had. His mindset, for one. It was obvious that he couldn't ask Crawford. He was sure he hadn't made a mistake. That left only one way to go. He had to find it himself. It had to be there, somewhere. It had to.

He had tried a preliminary exploration, but telepathy was the gift which depended the most on distance. His range was quite good and he knew it, but this was not the time to gamble. No, not the time at all.

So he lay there waiting for everybody else to fall asleep.

\---------------

It was not the wisest idea, but Schuldig closed the door after him. He had trouble concentrating when he knew there was an open door nearby. He found them unsettling. Anyway, he wasn't five anymore. He didn't have the kind of problems that were solved by running when you were caught. Now, getting caught was rather the problem.

Schuldig easily recognized when he was stalling to avoid a task he wasn't particularly willing to undertake, but he decided to indulge himself for once. There was something painfully appealing in Crawford when he was asleep. Schuldig could walk past the Mona Lisa without looking at it once, he could even set it on fire without a second thought, but he believed it a crime against life itself not to stop to watch Crawford in his slumber.

_Do you dream of the future?_ He thought at him. _Do you ever dream of...?_

Carefully, Schuldig sat on the bed. Crawford had ridiculously long lashes for a man. Totally at odds with his jaw. With his shoulders. With his fists. With who he was.

Contact would help, but Schuldig was moderately sure that it would wake him up. He was already taking too many risks as it were.

With a sigh, he dove in.

It took him a while to find himself. Crawford's mind was shielded quite differently than his own. Schuldig's barriers were mostly global and structured in layers, the most external ones against the pressure of people's thoughts, against the noise and interferences. The inner ones against attacks, blunt invasions and sneaky scryings. Closest to his core, the special shields that made his secrets invisible-like his mental room.

In contrast, Crawford's mind was fragmented in a million departments, all at the same level, each of them with its particular shield independent from the others. Schuldig supposed that precognitives needed to separate their visions, the unnumbered futures, from the interpretations they made of them, and this particular compartmentalization was the way to achieve it. The fact that Crawford's segments felt exactly the same, no matter if they were memories, visions, opinions or sensations was what made Schuldig hate getting into Crawford's head so much. Without a deep understanding of his tight-assed leader's classification system it was always a nightmare to find his way around his mind. He had the suspicion that it was another security measure against unwanted interference. That didn't make him empathize, though, or like his task any better.

Thoughts, no matter how compartmentalized, were always linked to each other through a network of associations. Schuldig just needed to surpass a shield to get at least a partial access to that network and locate the memories he was searching for.

It was not the first time he was here. He didn't get how Crawford's mind really worked, but he was familiar enough with it to know that the shields were impressive against direct blows but moderately weak against subtle approaches. Very much like reinforced doors, resisting a hammer but not a skilled lock-pick. Another remarkable difference from how his own shields worked. Subtlety required time and patience, though. But if done right, it would leave no trace behind, no eerie sensation that would raise suspicions, no evidence of the presence of anyone's mind in his.

Schuldig unconsciously smiled when he finally got under the first shield. He recognized the segments, he had been there two nights ago. It wouldn't be so difficult to retrace the location and search again, this time in earnest, until he found it, until he uncovered it.

And then everything would be fine again.


	4. 27

**27.**

Rosenkreuz, in Crawford's opinion, was a very instructive institution. First, it taught you to trust your instincts. Then, it taught you not to trust your instincts. Next, it tried to teach you to trust your superior officers. Finally, it taught you not to trust anyone, so you ended up trusting your instincts again. If you failed to learn such a simple lesson you wouldn't last a year outside its walls.

Crawford had survived nine.

So he resisted the impulse to space out and tap with his fingers on the table, trying to sort out what the fuck was going on, and kept on calmly taking notes --gibberish-- on the sides of a report while he pondered which course of action he should take now.

_"Done."_

_"...Schuldig?"_

_"Shh... sleep on."_

It was a recurrent scene. Precognitives didn't get disoriented by déjà-vu. They were trained to tell visions from facts. It had happened. In real life. Twice. Plus, the stunt of last night. He had only the vision to know what had happened, but it didn't require too much imagination to guess what a telepath could have been doing at his bedside in the middle of the night.

But the thing was that he had let it happen. Because, deep down, something told him it was for the best. Because his instincts compelled him to trust Schuldig.

And, if Rosenkreuz was a very instructive institution, it had never seen a more advantaged student than Brad Crawford.


	5. 26

**26.**

"What am I doing here?" Nagi asked.

It was a fair question. There were at least three good reasons why Schuldig had wanted to hold this conversation in his mental room. First, precognition wouldn't foresee thoughts. Any talk they had inside someone's mind was invisible to clairvoyants.

"What do you know about Crawford's trip to Switzerland?"

Second, telepaths trying to invade another person's mental room would project a tangible presence. It was some kind of synesthetic space that gave form to any kind of thought that took place inside it. It was virtually impossible to spy on what happened inside without giving oneself away.

"You know what I know about it, Schuldig. Get to the point."

Third, any psychic power that trifled with the physical world was useless there.

"The ultimate reason for Schwarz being in Tokyo is not to consolidate Eszett's political power in Japan, nor to manipulate minor organizations into sowing the chaos for us. We're here for the ritual. Eszett's ritual. It's the chance of a lifetime for them."

"It is the chance of a lifetime for me too, Schuldig. I told you to get to the point."

Schuldig stared at the boy for a short while. He wasn't looking forward to Nagi's reaction to his news. He decided against invoking chairs and kept on talking.

"I'm telling you this because you need to understand what it meant for Crawford to be summoned by the Elders only one month before the ritual. Eszett has invested everything into this. All those expeditions to Tibet, all the research, the _Book of Transcendentalism_, the demon, the kingdom, the..."

"Schuldig."

"Crawford couldn't just go to meet the Elders in their headquarters with the least wavering of loyalty, much less with a brain full of plans of betrayal. They would have taken him apart, this shit is too important for them, and the Elders haven't wielded the power of Eszett for more than 100 years by trusting blindly their subordinates. We knew they would search Crawford's mind, his soul if he had one, every and each of his hairs if that gave them the proof they were looking for that Schwarz would, indeed, make the ritual a reality and that Eszett's kingdom would be coming. I don't know how much you know about how shields work. They're different for everyone. Crawford's mind is not easy to search, but his shielding has certain weak points that a skilled telepath can exploit. The Elders had had more than a century to hone their gifts. Draw your own conclusions."

Now Nagi didn't look impatient, but fearful. He was obviously catching the whiff of dread that Schuldig knew he had been giving off in waves for the last four days.

"What am I doing here?" he asked again.

"The day before Crawford's departure we had a talk. He gave me access to his mind and I spent the whole fucking night locating and hiding everything related to our own plans for the ritual. Any treacherous thought towards the Elders, Eszett and even Rosenkreuz was carefully covered with an intricate shielding that made them look as if they weren't there. Not the thoughts, not the connections. Crawford was the poster boy for loyalty and concern for Eszett's best interests when I finished. As he had always been."

Nagi didn't ask where the "but" was, he could already sense it coming. He just glared at Schuldig as if it were the telepath's fault there was a Hell. Schuldig couldn't blame him. Maybe it was, after all, his fault.

"The very night Crawford came back I was to go to him and, taking advantage of his jet-lagged mind, eliminate the shields and leave Crawford as I had found him two days before. Only, when I located the points I took for reference, the thoughts weren't there. The shields weren't there. Nothing was there. No memories to restore, no trace of our plans, no proof of conversations ever taking place, no covering, no shielding, no... no nothing. Nothing. Not there. Nothing."

Finally, Schuldig let his voice die while Nagi's personification closed his eyes as the implications of everything Schuldig had explained sunk in.

With no warning, Nagi figure was shaken by a violent wind that spread towards Schuldig while the energy roared in their ears and the light underwent weird refractions.

Nagi's mind was manifesting the use of his power even if the telekinetic blast couldn't be real inside someone else's head.

With murderous intent, Nagi gave up the telekinesis and lunged towards Schuldig in the most traditional manner.

"Aaaaaah!!"

Schuldig ducked the attack with preternatural speed and caught Nagi in a forced embrace that trapped his arms. He then dragged him down and hushed until he started to feel Nagi's struggle lose strength.

"I know," Schuldig whispered, "I know. I know."

All of Schwarz wanted the ritual to fail, but none of them as powerfully as Nagi. The only reason he was outside a lab was that Crawford had requested his presence to ensure that Schwarz's all-important mission was a success. The Elders would support anything that led to their precious kingdom coming, so they had approved the transference. Nagi was the most powerful psychic the world had ever seen. At least a dozen of Eszett's I+D projects revolved around him. When this mission ended, he would go back to his place in the lab. He was the Queen Bee, never to leave his rooms. Only good for giving eggs to the hive. Not allowed to die, not allowed to live.

Little by little, the sparrow in Schuldig's hands stopped fighting.

"What am I doing here," he asked for the third time.

Schuldig's eyes fixed in the endless galaxy in front of him as he searched for the correct words.

"I don't understand Crawford. We're... we're too different. Our powers, our personalities, our minds..." Schuldig exhaled, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what went wrong. I don't know how to fix it."

Nagi's tension shifted. Schuldig still didn't let go, nor did he look at him. He knew the kid was listening and that was enough.

"I don't understand Crawford," he repeated, "but you do."

Nagi didn't look at him, either. He rarely went out of his way to establish eye contact and their current position didn't allow it comfortably.

"You don't need to restore the old memories," Nagi said slowly, "you can just put a duplicate there. The end result will be the same."

The galaxy wasn't moving. He should have devised some animated design or something.

"Memories are generated in a non-linear way," Schuldig explained, eyes still on the stars decorating the no-walls, "the access routes for every memory are multiple and depend on a certain amount of links called 'associations'. A true memory binds a lot of elements --visual, olfactory, sentimental-- that lead to other memories or trigger a certain thought. When you implant an artificial memory you have to design and create all those associations. If you fuck up, it's quite easy for the subject to find an inconsistency. In a normal people, it means weirding out a bit. In a psychic living with a telepath, it means being reported to Eszett. There's a reason why the usual procedure is wiping memories instead of creating false ones. It's difficult and entails a great many risks. Risks we're in no position to assume right now."

The frail personification in his arms started to tense again. Schuldig let him go, knowing that it was more due to their unnatural embrace than the impossibility of recreating the lost data. Schuldig hadn't been lying when he had said that Nagi and Crawford were alike. More than they realized.

"Give me some time to think about it," the kid said, "I'll... I'll gather information about telepathy, memory loss and recovery systems."

"Okay," Schuldig agreed, not sure if Nagi would catch the gesture if he just nodded.

"Try to--"

"I will."

Nagi nodded tensely and, a moment later, his figure disappeared. They still had time, Schuldig thought, not very far from desperate.


	6. 25

**25.**

Schuldig surprised himself again closing the door of Crawford's bedroom. Entering his mind would solve nothing as long as he didn't gain a deeper understanding of Crawford's unfamiliar network. But here he was anyway.

Schuldig sighed, let go of the knob and turned to the figure on the bed. The room was dark. Not only because of the poor night light that entered through the windows, reflections of a city that never slept, but because the furniture and decoration were disturbingly black. Schuldig found it oppressing. He didn't know how Crawford found it.

He walked towards the bed. It was barely two steps away from the door. Crawford's office was big. His bedroom wasn't.

Crawford slept in dark silk pajamas. The classic cut, with buttons down the front. Schuldig knew he did it because it was what was expected of him. Crawford had constructed himself through the years to make people believe it had been them constructing him. Sometimes, Schuldig asked himself how Crawford would have turned out if he had allowed himself to be. How that part of him nobody had been able to touch truly was.

As Schuldig had observed, Crawford usually slept on his back. He wondered if that, too, was a conscious decision, a part of his construction.

If anything, the insufficient lighting only made Crawford's face more perfect. Black and white. Like a Taijitu. Schuldig stood there, just watching it. He didn't know for how long.

"Not going in tonight?"

Schuldig startled and bit back a curse. It was stupid of him not to have checked Crawford's brain activity. It was stupid to have come here. It was stupid to jump at his voice.

"No," he simply answered.

Crawford opened his eyes and looked at him. For a short-sighted man, he rarely squinted even when he wasn't wearing his glasses. Maybe it had something to do with precognition. Maybe he wasn't looking at the current Schuldig, but at the one he would be in two seconds. Maybe he wasn't short-sighted at all. Trying to guess anything Crawford-related always gave him a headache. And that was the only thing he did nowadays, seemingly.

Neither of them said anything for what felt like ages. Finally, Schuldig broke the stare down contest and went back to his room.


	7. 24

**24.**

This time it was Nagi who had invoked a table and two chairs. His mental notes, which acquired the shape of sheets of paper, were meticulously spread on the surface of the desk in little piles kept at regular distance from one another. It never ceased to amuse Schuldig how the kid's OCD tendencies effortlessly overruled the chaos that puberty should have wrought on someone of Nagi's age.

"What have you got?" he asked, taking a seat in front of the kid.

Nagi leaned forward keeping his back straight and put his forearms on the table, letting the fingertips of both hands touch their counterparts.

It was not the time to mock his teammate, so Schuldig repressed a wicked smile.

"I have been thinking," Nagi's voice was low and pensive, "my first idea was--"

"That the Elders had busted us. Had busted me," Schuldig interrupted.

"Yes, that's right. I thought that maybe they had discovered the ruse and erased the treason from Crawford's mind so that he kept working on the ritual for them, but then I discarded it as ridiculous. Why would they tamper with Crawford's memory but leave ours intact? If the Elders knew of our plans and your shielding I'd be in a secret lab in Switzerland, you and Crawford would be in Austria until they determined if it was more convenient to brainwash you or eliminate you, and Farfarello would be dead. Of all of Schwarz, only I am irreplaceable. You said it yourself, the ritual is too important for Eszett, they wouldn't take such a high, unnecessary risk. It's obvious that the Elders don't know about this... incident."

Nagi cast a look at his notes.

"There is very little reliable literature about telepathy and mind tampering. Most of the texts about it are fiction or directly fraudulent material. That forced me to get into Rosenkreuz's information system to try and research more accurate sources, but it's not much that they keep in electronic format, they're not in a hurry to digitize their library, and hacking into their archives is a terribly slow process which requires a lot of time, most of it invested in hiding my true location so that their security programs don't track my signal back to Schwarz. The search on the medical histories and the reports of failed missions involving telepathic mistakes was a bit more fruitful, if only because the databases are very neatly organized, even if the amount of info available isn't exactly overwhelming."

Not that they needed to breathe in there, but Nagi paused anyway. Schuldig was impressed. Not as much for the amount of intel Nagi was able to gather in 48 hours as for the long speech. Nagi had talked to him more in these ten minutes than in the two years they had been working together.

"Of all the cases I could contrast and the essays I could find on the subject, one can extract a very important conclusion: if a memory has been erased, it can't be restored."

Nagi hesitated and his eyes shifted to one of his notes on the right. Schuldig had a bad feeling.

"Also, there are several cases of both unintentional and purposeful wiping of memory conducted by telepaths -some of them experienced ones with a very high score in the Harald-Kreuzberg test- which actually supports the theory of an accident occurring during the shielding that--"

"I don't make mistakes," Schuldig cut him off.

"I also found a very interesting record about a case occurring about fourteen years ago of a boy who completely wiped out his own--"

All the sheets were sent flying in every possible direction without them being touched or the slightest trace of wind blowing. Nagi fell silent.

"I don't make mistakes," Schuldig repeated slowly, full of purpose.

Nagi just gazed at him with his big eyes very open. His expression was unreadable. He seemed to reach a conclusion, because his body language relaxed and he leaned back on his chair.

"I couldn't find anything so specific as invisible shielding changing location or how to find misplaced information and relocate missing markers. So I'm going to assume the information has been erased and therefore lost. That leaves only one course of action:" Nagi introduced a dramatic pause. Schuldig thought he was seeing a mini-Crawford in action. "To induce Crawford to re-think and re-plan in less than a month what he had spent his whole life plotting."

Schuldig didn't like this giving up --it had to be there, dammit-- it was like admitting it had been his fault, that he had been careless and he had fucked up beyond salvation. But he knew that Nagi's practical approach was right. It was the reason why he had gone to him in the first place, because Nagi was cood headed and able to let go when Schuldig himself wasn't. Because Nagi was like Crawford. And Crawford was precisely what he needed but didn't have. So Nagi would do.

"How are we going to achieve that?" Schuldig asked rubbing his eyes as if they were tired, as if he were really using them now. "Crawford is a clever son of a bitch, he'll see through us. And the moment he does, he'll turn us in."

They were so fucked... Schuldig truly couldn't see a way out of this. And they had been so near, so near... Schuldig got up and started pacing. Nagi didn't move.

"You mentioned associations," Nagi said. "If the texts I've read are right, there are several kinds of data stored in the mind, all of them linked to other units of data by these associations. The units we've lost are memories and thoughts, maybe a couple of feelings... but misplacing a couple of ideas can't have altered Crawford's personality so drastically, and I don't think all the associations can be lost when so many of them are multiple and link so many different units together. It's just that some associations are abstract enough to be undetectable to an outsider's mind, but that doesn't mean they aren't there."

"Where are you getting at?" Schuldig asked in a monotone without stopping his pacing.

"What I'm saying is that erasing these explicit thoughts of betrayal from Crawford's mind doesn't make him loyal to Eszett. Deep inside, Crawford's hate towards Eszett and Rosenkreuz must be latent somewhere. He still wants to break free. He's still him."

Schuldig paused and looked at him. There was a glint of hope in Nagi's eyes. Schuldig knew hope to be infectious and wasn't sure he wanted to catch such a dangerous disease. The last evil in Pandora's Box. The worst curse the Gods bestowed on the mortals. Sometimes Schuldig thought the Greeks hadn't been so stupid, after all. He let himself be infected anyway. It was better than the alternative.

"We must trigger an already known response. We just have to find the right buttons to push," Schuldig murmured.

"What does Crawford have the most faith in, Schuldig?"

This was a rhetorical question. Or, at least, it had an obvious answer.

"In himself." Slowly, it started to dawn on Schuldig what Nagi was trying to say. If he couldn't go and implant new memories making Crawford think it was all his idea --ah, the irony... funny enough, it was truly his idea-- there was only one thing Nagi would expect of him as a telepath. Schuldig hesitated. Maybe to give himself a bit more time he walked to the chair and sat down again. "There are many risks in your plan. The future, as Crawford never tires of repeating, is not set in stone. We could try and force a vision and bring forth just the wrong possibility. That 1% Crawford never talks about. Us being slaves forever. You being locked away in a clinical white room. Me being a nutcase. All of us being discovered and executed. Eszett's kingdom coming and their demon ruling the Earth. Another future we can't even imagine."

"You'll have to trust Crawford's ability to interpret the probabilities correctly and find the right way again."

They fell silent for a while, both trying to weigh pros and cons.

"I should have free entrance to Crawford's mind to try and find the part where the visions spring from in order to stimulate its center," Schuldig finally said. "He already knows I've been reading him. I'm not sure what he thinks of it."

"What about manipulating a vision?" Nagi asked, frowning in concentration.

Schuldig snorted.

"You're not listening, kid--"

"Not_ a posteriori_, like creating a false memory, but in real time, so that all the associations are built naturally and the new idea is indistinguishable from the old ones, without any traces of tampering,"

Surprisingly enough, Schuldig burst out laughing. Nagi always forgot that the rest of them weren't almighty. That was a dead giveaway of how powerful the telekinetic really was. Schuldig wondered what kind of leverage Eszett and Rosenkreuz had on him, outside of sheer outnumbering. Sometimes Schuldig had the impression that Nagi could bring them all down on his own. Maybe Eszett had some kryptonite in the cellar. Someday he would dig into Nagi's head to search for the truth. Someday, when time wasn't biting his ass.

"Keep it real, kid," he said aloud, "that's some work you're suggesting. I'd need a month just to research what I would be supposed to be recreating. I can't tamper with a gift I know nothing about. We don't have that kind of time. I don't have that kind of access. I've just told you that Crawford knows I'm up to something, he won't let his guard down for me. Much less now, when he's forgotten he has a reason to."

"You might have erased the reason," Nagi stated very seriously, "but not the trust he has in you."

Schuldig snorted again.

"He didn't have any trust in me to begin with."

"He must have, if he let you in in the first place."

"Yes. No. It's complicated."

How could he explain to Nagi? Did Nagi really want to understand? Not even Schuldig was sure what kind of link bound him to Crawford. That bound Crawford to him. Schuldig had no idea if trust played any role in it.

Schuldig rubbed his eyes again. It brought the same relief as before: none.

"So, are we getting anywhere with this?"

Nagi's expression was slightly disapproving.

"I thought that's what we were trying."

"Sorry kid, I'm just..." he didn't finish the sentence. He suspected Nagi knew anyway. "I think that your idea of trying to get Crawford to have a vision might be our best shot. I'll work on it. I'll need some time to investigate and get familiar with Crawford's gift." The truth was, he didn't have the slightest idea how he was going to achieve it without raising Crawford's suspicions, or what he was going to say to him if he finally confronted Schuldig about his meddling. But he would think of something. Hopefully fast.

"And I'll research again, this time precognition. Anything that helps us trigger the vision we need." Nagi's tone suggested he was already considering this conversation over. He couldn't have been sleeping much lately with school, Schwarz, and now this extra load on his timetable. He looked tired, but Nagi wasn't prone to complaining. "Let's meet again in two days' time."


	8. 23

**23.**

He couldn't let go. He wished he could spot humidity stains or cracks in the paint, defects on the plaster, anything that made his ceiling a bit more interesting to stare at. He just couldn't let go.

And he had tried, really, he had. He had been thinking of Nagi's plan and the best possible approach. He had even considered the possibility of openly asking Crawford to scan the future. But he was afraid such a direct action could influence negatively on the things to pass. Crawford knew him, he would never expect outright sincerity from Schuldig because his truths were never exempt from lies, and thus, he would suspect an attempt at manipulation which would unbalance the teamwork and lead Crawford to mistrust him. Less inclined to share his thoughts of treason with him, condemning his plans to non-existence. A vision in that circumstance could show the wrong future and the damned situation would feed itself endlessly.

No, if he were going to manage this, it had to be underhandedly, if only because that was what Crawford would expect of him, which would raise the least suspicions in him. What would feel familiar, safe. And therefore, what would generate the right vision.

All the irony was killing him.

He turned his head to look at his alarm clock. 1:05 am. His eyes went back to the ceiling.

What if Nagi was right? What if that past incident hadn't been intentional, but an accident? Nobody knew the truth. Nobody but Schuldig. And he had forgotten.

_"My name's Schuldig",_ it was the only thing he would say. The first memory he had.

_"That's not truly a name," _the man had said.

_"My name's Schuldig._"

He hadn't really liked the man. He never liked anyone at Rosenkreuz, not even Crawford when he had met him. That came later, his liking Crawford, but Schuldig didn't really want to think about it now.

_"My name's Schuldig._"

_"Do you know where you are?_"

_"My name's Schuldig._"

_"Do you know where you are, Schuldig?_"

He remembered the mocking tone. He had decided to follow along anyway.

_"No. But I know that my name's Schuldig."_

_"Nice to meet you, Schuldig." _Yes, it was obvious that the man was laughing at him._ "Mine's Lübeck._"

Schuldig knew he hadn't answered to that. He hadn't been pleased to meet him and, back then, he had yet to understand the finer points of lying and its importance to survive in a place like that. He hadn't even known which place 'that' was, as Lübeck had just realized.

_"I'm the Head of the Telepathy Department,_" he had said with a stilted smile, _"welcome to Rosenkreuz._"

Schuldig could almost laugh at that.

They had carried out endless tests on him. His case was fascinating, they said. A telepath, no more than a child, who had wiped his own memory, supposedly out of remorse, since the only conscious thought remaining was that he was to be called 'schuldig'. A rather unique occurrence. Only later would he understand they didn't mean the name, but the fact that all his abilities and skills were intact, only the references to his past were gone. Not blocked, like in traumatic amnesiacs, but totally deleted from his brain. Only one name left behind: guilty. Nobody knew of what. He had tried asking about what Rosenkreuz knew of him. It wasn't much, he had only been there a couple of weeks before 'the incident' took place. He supposed that, if he had wanted to forget it all that badly, he would be better off not knowing, so he didn't insist.

Now, fourteen years later, he wondered if he should ask Nagi to let him see his own record.

Nobody knew the truth but Schuldig. And he had forgotten.

He just wished that Alexander Lübeck had been right and, back then, he had succeeded in his efforts to wipe clean his own memory, and not that he had failed at placing invisible shields on it.


	9. 22

**22.**

Schuldig ordered another coffee. He had chosen the place and the hour carefully. Schwarz's current case was mostly Crawford's job, which was a blessing, because time was precisely what they didn't have.

The 'Sakura' was a big café which took two stores of a building in the center of Shibuya. The terribly original name was indicative enough of the kind of clients it targeted. He wouldn't stand out too much here amongst all the western tourists. Schuldig leaned back in his seat, --red and white like all the furniture here-- and waited for the waitress in her ridiculous uniform to come back.

He had spent at least two hours working on her mind and messing with her memories. She had a sharp mind and an obsequious attitude which Schuldig considered made her a good waitress. A pity, all the scolding she would get today. But Schuldig just needed to know. So, he observed how she came back without table number three's order once again. The middle-aged couple there were starting to get seriously angry. They were French. It wouldn't be long till they tried to file a complaint. They had ordered for the first time more than half an hour ago. Again, after ten minutes. And again ten minutes after that. The waitress brought him the coffee with a smile. Maybe they would fire her today. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing; the uniform was truly hideous.

Schuldig got into her mind once again. This time he hadn't just covered the order from table number three like he had with the order from table number eight, but completely erased it. Of course, it wasn't there. Nagi was right: once deleted, a memory couldn't be restored. But his previous experiments of blocking and shielding had been completely reversible. First leaving markers, then using some significant parts of her own mind as markers. That second technique didn't leave a trace. That was what he had done with Crawford. He had had no trouble relocating and uncovering the memories in the waitress' mind.

"Thank you, honey," Schuldig said in English, because that was what the girl --Ayumi-- expected.

She smiled at him. Schuldig smiled at her thoughts. Not every Japanese found him attractive. Barely anyone, no matter the nationality, found him nice. Ayumi wouldn't, either, if she knew what he had been doing to her all morning.

He decided to test another waitress and look for significant differences in the results with the same methods. He considered asking if they had an aspirin. This was going to be a long day.


	10. 21

**21.**

As expected, Nagi's research on precognition was thorough but ultimately useless from a telepath's perspective. No book gave directions such as: when you get to the childhood memories, turn to the right and keep on walking for three blocks, then turn to the left and continue straight. The core of clairvoyance is at the end of the alley, fifth door to the right.

Schuldig let him ramble on, though. Crawford had always insisted on it: every piece of information was worth knowing. It had taken years for Schuldig to learn that, horrible taste in suits or not, Crawford was mostly right about things.

That would give him more time to decide how he wanted to introduce his findings to Nagi.

The scenario was the same as two days ago. Table, chairs, notes, galaxies. And Nagi's mental voice creating no echo at all. Schuldig would have felt offended otherwise... it would imply he was an airhead.

"Schuldig?" Nagi's tone was kind of expectant. Schuldig hadn't been aware he could space out in his own mind.

"Yeah, well... last night I entered Crawford's mind from my room."

"I thought telepathy depended heavily on distance."

"It does," Schuldig agreed, "but I judged discretion was preferred to efficiency this time. I told you about Crawford knowing I've been up to something. I can slip into his mind undetected by both his physical and psychical senses, but not if I sit at his bedside to do it."

Nagi nodded encouragingly. Schuldig wasn't feeling too encouraged at the moment, though.

"I'm getting more familiar with how his mind is ordered," he explained without much conviction, "and I think I'm learning to move faster in there..."

Nagi looked moderately crestfallen.

"But you didn't find his gift."

"You didn't, either."

"I've just explained to you about a dozen methods to boost and stimulate a seer's visions!"

"But not by a telepath. I don't mind trying to spike his coffee, though, I've always wanted to see Crawford high..."

"Schuldig!"

The telepath violently slammed his hand on the table. A deep silence followed. Nagi looked at him again with his big eyes wide open. Schuldig knew Nagi rarely saw him so serious and full of repressed violence. And it was for a reason.

"Listen, kid, I'm not you and I'm not Crawford. And thank your God that I'm not Farfarello, either. Everyone has their way to deal with pressure. This is mine. It doesn't mean I've slept more than you this last week, or that I've investigated less, and above all, that I haven't replayed in my mind once and again what the fuck happened that night, what could have gone wrong or how the hell I could have not noticed."

Nagi wasn't looking at him with empathy but with cold hatred.

"Look, I..." Schuldig tried really hard to find the words because he understood, really, he did. And he was usually quite the smooth talker. Lately everything was going to shit, all he had tried so hard to build, to achieve, to be... It was like being back to the time he didn't know anything and everyone had the right to order him around. To mold him. To use him. Then he had gotten a taste of how it was to hold the reins to his own destiny and now 'this' had blown it all away, like a house of cards. He hated feeling so useless. "I know that you blame me, and I know what you're risking here. But I've been conducting tests the whole day and sneaking into Crawford's mind the whole night, and I've got a new theory that--"

"Fuck him." Nagi interrupted him.

Schuldig blinked. He couldn't have misheard. Not here, where words weren't truly said and listened to.

"What?"

Because he couldn't decide which meaning would be more hilarious, if Nagi wanting them to follow Crawford's plans without Crawford knowing, Nagi wanting him to make Crawford's life impossible or if Nagi was truly suggesting what he thought he was suggesting.

"Fuck him," the kid repeated mercilessly. "I've read about it. Telepathy is not only directly proportional to distance. It's also exponentially boosted by contact; that combined with the lowering of defenses that sexual activity carries, makes seduction a standard practice for telepaths during intel missions."

Schuldig sighed and shook his head.

"Look--"

"No, you look. We have three weeks to fix this mess. Three weeks. Twenty one days to give Crawford back his memories, which we can't, or to make him think them anew, which we will. I've read his file, I know of his sexual orientation. I've also read yours. So suck it up and start waving your ass because I need you to get to Crawford's core before this huge, gigantic, humongous shit hits the fan!"

The shock of hearing Nagi use that kind of language was enough to render Schuldig speechless.

"You..." Nagi said after a short silence, when he thought he had calmed enough to trust his voice again, "you came to me because you wanted to know what Crawford would do. Well, this is it."

Schuldig resorted to his favorite nervous gesture and rubbed his eyes.

"There's... I don't think your plan is going to... Crawford won't fall for it." Smooth talker, indeed. Schuldig felt like laughing.

Nagi glared at him as if he was trying to fry him with the laser beams coming from his eyes.

"We slept together." Schuldig finally explained. "Once. We decided it was better to leave it at that."

"Why?"

"It wasn't the right time to play."

From the tone he used, it was easy to deduce they had been Crawford's words, not Schuldig's.

"Play?"

Schuldig couldn't help noticing how Nagi's monotonous intonation made it more like a comment and less like a question. Just like Crawford.

"Sex is a power game. There can't be two winners. It complicates everything. It just wasn't worth it."

"For you or for him?"

"For both," Schuldig narrowed his eyes. He didn't like what Nagi was implying. "You'll understand some day."

Nagi didn't look bothered by Schuldig calling him a kid. He just seemed more decided than ever.

"Maybe the time to play has come."

"Nagi..."

"Think of what's at stake. Tell me it's not worth it now."


	11. 20

**20.**

"What a punk," Crawford murmured, "but he's useful."

Walking down the dark corridor after his brief meeting with Kawaji, he couldn't help thinking that fools with oversized ego made the best puppets. And the musician fit the description perfectly. Just a couple of well-placed compliments, a bit of humoring, a dose of flattery, a generous handful of servility, and he was Crawford's. It was terribly easy to manipulate someone who was eager to believe what he wanted to hear.

The song would be ready in time. A pity that Kritiker had to send Weiß to cut short Kawaji's brilliant career. But Crawford wasn't worried. Eszett's scheme was constructed as a long term project, built with little pieces put together one at a time. Kawaji had fulfilled his role. No need to let him outlive his usefulness.

Aah, yes, megalomaniacal morons were the best. Too big an ego could truly blind a man.

His next step took a fraction of a second too long to follow his self-assured pace. He had a bad feeling, too vague to be considered a forewarning. He thought of his team.

Too big an ego could truly blind a man.

He would do well in not forgetting it.


	12. 19

**19.**

Breakfast was the only meal they sometimes cooked themselves. Never for one another, though. Schuldig would eat nothing and break his fast only with coffee. Nagi would favor rice, which, in Schuldig's opinion, went against the most basic laws of Nature. Crawford's habits would change depending on the day. Some days he could prepare himself a sumptuous feast, others nothing at all. No one knew exactly why because no one really cared. Farfarello could be trusted with a knife but not with fire, so he wasn't allowed to get near the stove. He fed on milk and bagels in the morning.

They didn't usually have breakfast together, not unless they shared the same schedule, but they wouldn't go out of their way to shun each other, either.

This seemed to be one of those days Crawford woke up hungry, Schuldig thought as he drank his coffee.

Crawford never really blew his hair dry. Schuldig's eyes fixed on his wet nape as the man finished arranging his scrambled eggs, pieces of toast and ham on a single plate. Crawford wasn't wearing a jacket, much less an apron. His ability to cook without staining his perfectly ironed shirt never ceased to amaze Schuldig.

"Is there nothing you don't excel at?" Schuldig asked, only half-mocking.

Nagi's chopsticks paused for a second in their way to the kid's mouth. Then, without Nagi raising his eyes from his bowl, they resumed what they were doing.

Crawford took the plate to the table, served himself a cup of coffee, and took a seat.

"Nothing," he replied.

Schuldig's eyes lingered on Crawford's face until he forced himself to turn to Nagi and tease the kid as he always did.

Nagi's role was easier: he usually ignored Schuldig's attempts to engage in friendly banter and that was that.

Neither of them could decide if maintaining the façade of normalcy was painfully difficult or sickeningly easy.


	13. 18

**18.**

/Schuldig./

Not without humor, Schuldig thought that Crawford had managed to make an art of laconism. Maybe it was to compensate for all the bullshit he was forced to spout during the jobs.

Schuldig interrupted what he was doing and went to Crawford's office.

"You called me?" he asked of the figure sitting behind the desk.

Crawford gestured for Schuldig to sit. There were three visitor chairs in the room, but they were only used simultaneously when Schwarz wanted to make a show of a common briefing for Eszett's benefit. Most of their work meetings took place in Schuldig's mental room. Usually two of the chairs were put away against the wall; Schuldig sat down on the third one in front of Crawford's desk.

Crawford rarely tried to make the light reflect from his glasses in front of his team, so Schuldig could see clearly his cold stare. He had the distinct feeling he wasn't going to like this meeting.

"What's wrong." Crawford asked at last, if his lack of intonation could make of the short sentence a question.

Schuldig cocked his head a little bit and let his eyebrows draw down in an inquisitive frown. He had known a confrontation would be coming sooner or later. He had reflected long and hard on the kind of reaction he should show and he had finally decided on an understated response. So he kept silent.

"You've had your panties in a twist all week," Crawford humored him and elaborated, even if Schuldig was convinced that he wasn't buying his act for a second, "so, what the fuck is going on."

That was another characteristic of the more private Crawford that contrasted powerfully with his professional self. Schuldig bet most of their employers would have a stroke at hearing the kind of profanities that came out of Crawford's mouth when nobody else was listening.

"It's just a personal issue that--"

"You seem to be unaware of your situation," Crawford interrupted him in a tone less passionate than threatening. He then proceeded to remind Schuldig what was at stake here all the while, the telepath was sure, judging his reactions and trying to read him. Schuldig felt the most burning rage inside his chest, fighting to break free. He felt it churning in his stomach, growing to the point he couldn't be sure he was reigning it all in or not. To the point he couldn't be sure he cared.

_You are the one unaware of your situation!_ he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. _You are the one who doesn't remember what's at stake! You son of a bitch, you saw it all, dammit! It was your fucking plan! And now it's not there and I can't tell you about it in case you've changed your goddamned mind and Nagi wants me to fuck you back into it andyouaskmewhatthefuckisgoingon??!!_

Schuldig put on his blandest smile and answered instead:

"Everything is under control."


	14. 17

**17.**

Schuldig rubbed his eyes. He then kept staring at the ceiling. Nagi was right, he had to do it. Not for the reasons the kid believed. Schuldig had a new theory and he had to confirm it before deciding the best course of action. He had tried telling the kid but Nagi hadn't wanted to listen. Nobody wanted to listen these days. If his hypothesis was correct, they were in a fucking big mess. But he had to know, or he wouldn't be able to sort all this shit out. And his best option, his only option, was having sex with Crawford. Who was, without a doubt, the last person on this planet he wanted to seduce. If only because he was, without a doubt, the last person on this planet he wanted to be rejected by.

He had sworn to himself he wouldn't make the same mistake, not even if Crawford crawled at Schuldig's feet and begged him. Now he had to betray himself and break that promise. And the worst thing, the really painful, unbearable, disgusting thing was that a tiny part of him was looking forward to it.

He threw his fist against the wall before he knew what he was doing. He hissed at the pain. It didn't really help much. It still smarted less than the memories.

It wasn't as if he had been clingy back then. Had it been so wrong of him to want a repeat? It was just sex, dammit. He had never asked for breakfast in bed or heart-shaped chocolates. But the fact remained that he had started to kiss Crawford and the man had pushed him away and lectured him about playing, complications and what not. And that was okay, really, it was. Schuldig had never had problems of self-esteem. He didn't mind being told 'no' because that didn't mean he wasn't damn hot. He was. And a fucking good agent, too. He didn't have Crawford's height or his shoulders, but he didn't need them. Or it wasn't as if Crawford's actions weren't invariably ruled by laws or reasonableness and convenience. Schuldig could respect that; he didn't consider himself particularly emotional, either. So that was not the problem, it had never been. Crawford's words afterwards were.

_Unless you consider yourself strong enough to stand the burning, I suggest you refrain from playing with fire._

Arrogant fucker, son of a bitch. As if Schuldig had looked brokenhearted after pledging eternal love and being spurned. As if he gave a fuck.

He would cut his own dick off before giving Crawford a reason to even smirk thinking he was interested in him again after being told off like an annoying teenager. But Schuldig cutting his own dick off couldn't keep the Elders from summoning their demon and establishing their beloved kingdom. And maybe swallowing his pride would.

He forced himself to close his eyes and to shut up the irritating little voice that tried to remind him that, if there was something Crawford might possibly not excel at, it sure as hell wasn't fucking.


	15. 16

**16.**

After staring blankly at the screen for maybe two or three hours, it finally sank in to Nagi that he just wasn't able to concentrate today. It was useless to waste energy trying to get something done in this state.

Sighing, he shut off his computer and dropped on the bed. His alarm clock was digital but he could still hear a constant tic tac tic tac tic tac in the back of his head. Only two weeks left. And no progress.

/Schuldig, please,/ he projected.

/I know,/ the answer resounded in his head.


	16. 15

**15.**

Schuldig parked the car and signaled with his head for Farfarello to get out. He then put the plastic covers in place and got out himself.

Their instructions were clear, as always. Sometimes, Schuldig felt like he was walking the dog. Farfarello was the kind of asset that nobody in Rosenkreuz would have believed in. That was probably part of his usefulness, the way psychics would underestimate him; and misjudging Farfarello was the kind of mistake you only made once.

They walked down the street for awhile. Crawford had told them to leave the car three blocks north from the place. He had also provided a description of the guy and of the situation. Schuldig's task was just to ensure things went accordingly to the plan.

These kind of missions weren't jobs for Eszett, Schuldig knew. They were to keep Farfarello under control. The first time Schuldig had seen a corpse he had thought 'better her than me'. He had thought exactly the same after his first kill. But, as a telepath, he couldn't truly enjoy taking lives. People on the verge of dying always projected loudly. And it was terribly easy for Schuldig to see his own death in theirs. That was the main difference between Farfarello and Schuldig. Schuldig wallowed in schadenfreude; ruining lives was all about power, about being more than others, about being above them. But Farfarello was a true sadist: he took pleasure in the pain of others because he envied them, they had what he would never posses and could only touch through them while he destroyed them. God was only an excuse, Schuldig knew. Farfarello was a psychopath, a junkie of his own needs, and only getting his fix would keep him manageable. Crawford also knew. For him, this was just another colorful pill to give his crazy pet. A pill that Schuldig was ordered to administer.

They reached the alley. Schuldig said that he would wait there, at the corner. Farfarello went in. Schuldig cast a look at his watch. Two minutes. He started to scan the surroundings, looking for possible minds to blind, senses to cloud, witnesses to distract.

Schuldig understood how Schwarz was structured. It was logical, really. Crawford was a good leader, quick to the cut, decisive, self-assured and intelligent. He made the right decisions and came up with the right plans, kissing the right asses at the right time. Nagi was mainly in charge of logistics, information and technology. He could also make half of Tokyo crumble down if he put his mind to it, but Crawford preferred not to show his trump cards if it wasn't necessary. Schuldig and Farfarello worked the field. Schuldig was subterfuge whereas Farfarello was brute force. They were a great team and frequently worked together. In general lines, they even liked each other. But it was straining for a telepath to be near such an unstable mind, it was like having a cat scratch your door day and night when you knew you were allergic to its fur. A madman's mind was the last place a telepath wanted to be. The last.

A man went out of a back door in the alley with two big bags of trash in his hand. Schuldig didn't know who he was, neither did he cared. The guy paused when he spotted a redhead at the corner.

"Be quick," Schuldig murmured.

The man thought the redhead was talking to him and made a gesture of incomprehension. Schuldig didn't bother looking away when Farfarello fell on him. It wasn't the sight that disturbed him. It was the mind, it was always the mind. He blocked the thoughts, strengthening his outer shields, and concentrated on preventing people in the vicinity from registering the screams the man let out.

Thankfully, Farfarello heeded his words and ended fast. Schuldig made sure they didn't leave any traceable evidence behind. He also covered Farfarello's presence from the few people they encountered on their way back. The bloodstains weren't scandalous, but they tended to call for attention, no matter how few in number and size.

Farfarello's mind was excited, the cat scratching at Schuldig's door with renewed vigor. The telepath kept the door firmly closed. A madman's mind was the last place a telepath wanted to be.


	17. 14

**14.**

Schuldig had spent the last 45 minutes trying to decide which sexual position would best serve his interests. He had, so far, left out blowjobs, frottage and any kind of elaborate kink. He felt inclined to discard handjobs, too. If he had to do this, he'd rather do it well.

Schuldig sighed. Eight years in Rosenkreuz, six years on the field, proficiency in five languages and being able to kill with his brain, for this. It was so ridiculous that he wanted to bang his head against the wall.

He couldn't decide if he felt more like a pervert or a moron.

In the end, he supposed it was his prerogative to choose what he felt like doing. And it would even be convenient. Mysticism and romanticism aside, penetrative sex allowed the deepest connections. Legends, after all, were often based on truths.

Once he had decided on the mechanics, only the planning of the seduction was left. The problem with Crawford, as always, was that he knew too much. It would be tricky to get into his pants without him suspecting an ulterior motive. Especially since this was not the best moment to engage in a sexual relationship with a subordinate. In fact, it was most probably the worst. Schuldig would have to push the limits and use his telepathy to make Crawford truly want to cross the line at such an inconvenient time. But that could lead to a rather spectacular backfiring if Schuldig overdid it and Crawford noticed he was being manipulated.

Schuldig knew he didn't have a strong sense of morals. Scruples and principles were a luxury you could afford only if your life was good enough for it. Because once you were hungry enough, you would steal. Once you were threatened enough, you would kill. Once you were punished enough, you would lie. And that was fine, in Schuldig's opinion, because there was nothing more important to oneself than oneself.

So it was not his morals, Schuldig knew, but his pride that made him squirm uncomfortably at the thought of manipulating Crawford's desires, forcing him to want Schuldig. It was like admitting he wasn't enough. A new kind of low for him.

And it wasn't like stooping low was usually a problem, because pride wasn't so different from scruples and principles when measured with one's survival, but the fact remained that he didn't fucking want to resort to that. He could rationalize it till he puked, but he still didn't want to.

Schuldig ground his teeth together. Whining like a princess would get him nowhere. He had things to do. And he would do them.


	18. 13

**13.**

Kinugawa was an idiot. Like every pawn Eszett set his eyes on, he had a talent, that Crawford could admit. But having a skill didn't mean you could put it to practice with finesse, only that you could put it to practice.

Crawford kept on typing, following a regular rhythm. The room was dark, only the screen lighting the office. It was very late.

And the asshole had had the guts --idiocy-- to assure the Elders that he would keep Schwarz out of jail. Schwarz. Kinugawa had mistaken his team for the retarded oafs the attorney usually dealt with, lowlifes stupid enough to leave fingerprints on a weapon, to abandon it in a crime scene and to use it again in a second murder.

_Ha,_ Crawford thought without faltering in this work in front of the computer, _don't make me laugh._

It was always like this, they were all the same trash. It made his job easier, after all. In fact, he usually made conscious efforts to hide their true power, to make people underestimate them, but sometimes he...

Crawford's fingers stopped. Some seconds passed by. He rarely let an outward action betray his line of thought. Very calmly, he saved the document, closed all the open programs and shut off the computer. He didn't turn on the lights; he was familiar enough with his surroundings to navigate around the apartment in the dark. He went to the bathroom. When he was done, he walked to his room, he changed, put his glasses on the bedside table, the watch beside the glasses and got into bed. He had a lot of thinking to do.

But first, he made another attempt. He knew his gift inside out and was aware that he was not the best precognitive to search for specific events at a specific time. His bigger talent had always lain in using the knowledge, and not getting it at will. Most of his visions came uninvited when some danger was nearby. But that didn't mean he couldn't command his gift at will to some extent. When he didn't restrict the search too much he was usually able to summon a vision, any vision. And so, he tried again. He forced himself to relax, emptied his mind, fell back to the old exercises he thought he had left behind years ago. He waited. He pushed. Nothing came.

He didn't open his eyes. When he had first noticed that he couldn't see the future from some point onwards --the eve of the ritual, to be exact-- he had started to suspect he wouldn't survive that day. He hadn't liked it. There had to be a way to change that future, there always was. But, as he had later realized, his visions weren't always linked to himself. That had made him think. The futures he saw shouldn't be affected by his vital state. He had tried to get as close as he could to the events that would lead to his demise, but he couldn't see any hint about it. Not that his visions were always clear and signaled a fixed future; they didn't. It was more like juggling possibilities, ever-changing depending on the factors one moved. At one point, Crawford had observed that the visions didn't really stop at an event, they stopped at a time. That lead to a very different conclusion. It was not his death that was blocking his visions.

That was not the only thing happening lately. Tonight hadn't been the first time he had surprised himself thinking things that were new but felt familiar. It wasn't unlike driving through a road with old asphalt fixed with patches of new tar.

Other times, he couldn't shake off the distinct feeling that something was missing. He just couldn't tell what.

All the hints pointed to the same place. And the thing was that one could only trust his instincts to some extent, because instincts were really easy to manipulate if you had access to them, for example creeping to someone's bedside in the middle of the night.

Crawford pondered his options. They weren't many.

He calculated it was time to toss and turn a little. He then fell immobile again.

It was not the best moment to go crying to Rosenkreuz asking for his brain to be checked. It was never a good moment for that. The general policy was to consider that the weak deserved what occurred to them. No matter what Schuldig was plotting, the ritual was less than two weeks away. He had worked very hard to be where he was. Any doubt he had about his team would be cast upon him tenfold if he let anyone know he had it. Asking the help of another telepath in the field was out of the question. To have been played by your own telepath was the worst kind of failure a team leader could face. Schwarz was the apple of Eszett's eye. Every psychic on Earth would kill and die for an opportunity to tear them apart. To tear Crawford apart. He had never had friends before. He didn't have them now. He was alone.

His breathing was flawlessly regular. The silence reigned in the apartment, acoustically isolated from Tokyo's night life.

Confronting Schuldig directly wouldn't help, much less now when it was the telepath who had the upper hand. Crawford didn't even know his intentions, his motives, his aim. It was useless to push without a leverage. And Crawford didn't believe in wasting energy.

Thirteen days from the ritual and the only sensible option was to wait and see. Not Crawford's favorite course of action, but nothing he couldn't deal with. Crawford had never broken down under pressure. He didn't intend to now. And when he finally found a way to fix all this mess, someone was going to pay for it. Dearly.


	19. 12

**12.**

Schuldig was nervous. Contrary to popular belief, he liked to plan his actions carefully before being set into motion. He felt blind getting to work without thorough research. But Crawford's mind was like molasses, terribly slow to go through. He could know in less than fifteen minutes what made a normal person give away money, pride and dignity --sometimes their mothers-- for a chance to bed him. It was easy to locate people's desires: they generated tons of associations and nearly every conscious and unconscious thought led to them eventually.

But Crawford had a knack for repressing his wishes. That had allowed him to be chosen as a favorite in both Rosenkreuz and Eszett. For what would be more convenient to use than a tool without a personal aim? Eszett had been more than glad to give him its own. They thought they had given Crawford a purpose where he had none. Fools. Yes, Crawford was extraordinarily good at hiding his wants. His feelings --if the bastard had them, because Schuldig had yet to find proof of it-- were totally cut off from his rational conscience. It made it a pain to track them down. And the most powerful wish was the one Crawford isolated the most. Much more now, with the plans to break free from Eszett deleted. Barely a handful of obscure associations connecting to it were left. Not that it was that particular feeling what Schuldig was searching for. He already knew of it, of Crawford's relentless thirst for freedom, and that knowledge wouldn't grant him access to Crawford's bed. But the key to his seduction had to be there, somewhere, if only Schuldig did have the damned time to entertain himself deciphering that Rubik's cube Crawford had for a brain, which was not the case, much less when he had been appointed responsible for the Kundalini project and spent ten hours a day working on it.

Schuldig hated precognitives.

For lack of a better alternative, he had just laid out his plans based on what he knew of Crawford from external observation. Schuldig considered himself an outstanding telepath precisely because he didn't let his gift take the weight of his work. Rather than deceiving people, he preferred to let people deceive themselves. Manipulation wasn't so much about choosing which lies to say than deciding which truths to hide. So, for Schuldig, using people was extremely easy; he only had to find out what they wanted to hear to then carefully choose how to tell them. Telepaths who forced their gifts on their victims were losers, in Schuldig's opinion. So, with time, he had become pretty good at understanding human nature through observation alone. And, even if Crawford was a hard nut to crack, he was the person Schuldig had been the closest to for the longest time. It shouldn't be so difficult to figure out what Crawford would be looking for in a partner.

Schuldig had discarded all the possible tactics television, cinema and magazines taught, because Crawford wouldn't appreciate being wooed. Just the thought made Schuldig laugh. Instead, he had been planting subtle suggestions in Crawford's mind for two days. Nothing obvious, just a little bit of noticing Schuldig here, a little bit of increased libido there... nothing Crawford could identify as foreign.

Schuldig had avoided anything blatantly sexual till now. He had been extremely efficient at work and cool about it. He had engaged Crawford in friendly banter, exuding wit and nonchalance. He had left him space. But the clock kept running and he would need to resort to the physical soon.

He tried not to think what would happen if he failed, but even more than that, he tried not to think what would happen if he succeeded.


	20. 11

**11.**

Schuldig checked the clock. Timing was everything. Crawford would probably be proud of him. Schuldig turned off the tap and stepped out of the shower. He had been observing Crawford's routine. He just hoped he didn't use his precognition to find out if the bathroom was free. Schuldig had been extra-careful in his plans so that nothing threatening could trigger a vision. He knew that, just as normal sighting was especially sensitive to movement, Crawford's clairvoyance was sensitive to danger. He counted on this being too petty an event to show up in Crawford's conscious and on Crawford not deciding to avoid it even if it wasn't. 'Destiny to Crawford: reporting an encounter with a roommate at two past eight. Over and out'. It was too ridiculous to even consider it.

He wrapped a towel around his waist. It wasn't a big one. He toweled his hair a little and threw this second towel like a hood.

As a telepath, Schuldig couldn't help keeping mental tabs on the closest people to him. It was like asking a dog not to sniff the scent of his owner. Schuldig frowned. Bad example. It was similar to the way a blind man would know the furniture by touch. It also helped to perceive their thoughts when his teammates called for him through projection. It acted like a radar of sorts; regardless of walls and doors, Schuldig could know the exact position of each member of Schwarz in relation to him. Unless they were too far away. But that wasn't the case here.

When Schuldig felt Crawford's mind entering the corridor towards the bathroom, he went out. For some reason Schuldig couldn't understand --maybe a side-effect of his other unearthly sight?-- Crawford seldom turned on the lights in the corridor. So Schuldig did. They were halogen, tasteful and pleasant to the eye.

After a pause when they spotted each other, they kept on walking. Crawford's goal was obviously the bathroom. Schuldig's room was past Crawford's position.

The apartment was big, but the corridor wouldn't fit two men shoulder to shoulder. When they finally came together, neither of them moved aside.

Schuldig reached up and removed the towel from his head, meeting Crawford eye to eye. He knew what halogen lighting did to his coloring, to the drops of water on his wet skin, to his eyes. He didn't smirk, he just stared at Crawford, his head just slightly tilted upwards to compensate the difference of heights.

Crawford didn't say anything. He stared back for a short while. He then let his look fall down slowly till it met the puddle forming at Schuldig's feel. He lifted his eyes again till they met his subordinate's. Crawford let a questioning, disapproving eyebrow rise. Schuldig's defiant expression said quite eloquently what he thought of the mess he was making. It wasn't as if a cleaning service on Eszett's payroll didn't take care of worse stains than this for them.

They reached a stalemate again. Or rather, it was the same one as before. For a crazy moment, Schuldig entertained the thought of not giving in, just to see if they would really waste the whole day in this silly game of pride and authority. He thought, not without some thrill, that maybe Crawford would end up touching him to push him aside. Although a punch to the jaw was actually more probable. That wasn't such an exciting prospect.

In any case, when he considered he had proven his point --or rather, fulfilled his mission-- Schuldig smirked. And, without taking his eyes off of Crawford, he finally moved aside and even made a courteous gesture to signal he had deferred to Crawford.

Crawford kept his eyes on him barely for a second as he resumed his way to the bathroom. Once he had passed by, Schuldig also resumed his. Schuldig continued toweling his hair as he concentrated on placing a small suggestion in Crawford's mind.

When he felt his leader's eyes on his bare back as Crawford turned to close the bathroom door, he thought that the mission had, indeed, been a success.


	21. 10

  
**10.**

"You've been looking at me lately," Schuldig drawled.

Crawford was quite talkative in front of their clients, like a salesman in a cars dealership. In front of his team, in the privacy of their apartment, his reluctance to say more than necessary bordered on the irrational. So, as expected, he said nothing. He deigned to look Schuldig in the eye, though. That in itself was a small victory. Even if the look he cast Schuldig was more speculative than emotional.

Schuldig kept the visual contact and neared the desk. He casually skirted it until he came to face Crawford's office chair. The smirk firmly in place, he leaned forward and supported his weight with both hands on the section of the armrests that Crawford wasn't using. The man didn't seem especially concerned by the invasion of his personal space. Didn't look encouraging, either. But the fact that he hadn't told Schuldig off yet was as good as permission in the telepath's eyes. That close, Schuldig could smell Crawford's expensive, and thus, understated cologne. Schuldig didn't like the scent. He was pretty sure that Crawford didn't either. He wondered if the precog's choice of attire had anything to do with his personal tastes or it was just another part of his construction.

"So, at the risk of sounding trite, I must ask..." Schuldig didn't have to raise his voice, he was nearly nose to nose with that impassive face. Ridiculously long lashes, indeed. "Like what you see?"

That Crawford didn't answer was not surprising. That he didn't hit Schuldig when the telepath relinquished his brace on one of the chair's armrest to boldly put his hand on Crawford's knee, was. Schuldig knew what game he himself was playing. He wondered which one Crawford was.

Slowly, as smoothly as he knew how, Schuldig slid his hand upwards. He let it fall to the inner side. Little by little, inch by inch, his fingers caressed his way up. All the while, their eyes didn't stray. Focused on Schuldig with all he was, Schuldig would have noticed if his leader had swallowed, if his perspiration had increased, but he didn't and it hadn't. Son of a bitch. Schuldig felt like kissing him. His hand crept a little bit higher. There wasn't much thigh left.

"So," Schuldig whispered, "when I reach your groin, will I find you hard for me?"

Crawford had the gall to blink slowly, as if this weren't with him.

"No," he said.

Schuldig's fingers moved higher and higher still. Tortuously slow. Crawford's leg was warm. Schuldig knew his hand would feel red-hot to Crawford. The smirk grew wider. His hand caressed on. He didn't need to look down to know he would soon reach the groin. He kept his eyes fixed on Crawford. Crawford didn't move a muscle. Schuldig went higher. When his middle finger was about to touch Crawford between the legs, Schuldig's hand stopped.

"Let's not find out," Schuldig murmured, "that way we can both save face, even if we both know what the answer would have been."

And with that, Schuldig pulled away without looking down, not once, self-confident enough not to need an evidence that proved he was right. It was only when he turned to the door that he broke eye contact with Crawford.

The best thing about Crawford engaging in the staring, was that he probably hadn't noticed the bulge in Schuldig's own pants.

When Schuldig finally closed the door behind him, he sighed.


	22. 9

**9.**

After receiving a call from the Elders early in the morning, Crawford had set to work. He couldn't help noticing that this was, indeed, a small world. Of all the possible sacrifices for the ritual, it had to be Abyssinian's little sister they wanted. Who, curiously enough, Schreient had kidnapped for their pathetic vengeance on Weiß. Schreient, the collective hired by Schuldig to do the dirty work in the Kundalini experiment. It was like a big circle always involving the same people. On a planet inhabited by millions and millions of different human beings, it sure said something about coincidences. Or the lack thereof.

He already knew where Fujimiya Aya was going to be kept. He had 'seen' it. That had actually been an utterly interesting vision. Crawford had had to repress some half-formed plans derived from what he had seen that could happen if he played his cards well. He didn't want anything more than vague impressions floating around in his mind for now.

At ten thirty he had gone to Nagi's room. Today was Sunday; that didn't matter much to an Eszett operative, but it did to a high-schooler. He had requested blue prints of the manor and a helicopter. The blueprints could be ready in ten minutes, Nagi had said. Nagi's bedroom was the biggest in the apartment since it also served as his workplace. He had a plotter in a corner, under a certain number of shelves that went up to the ceiling. Not even Crawford could have comfortably reached the highest one, much less with the plotter taking so much space under it. But for Nagi, that wasn't a problem. The shelves were overflowing with books, manuals and files.

Crawford had given him the description of the manor. It would probably be the property of Takatori Masafumi. If not, Nagi could try searching the real estate under the name of the companies linked to the Takatori family. Crawford hadn't tried to tell Nagi how to do his job, though. While the telekinetic searched the database of the Japan Institute of Architects after having found out the name and the address of the building, Crawford couldn't keep his thoughts from going back to what he had foreseen. Nagi wasn't aware of his own power. He didn't want to be.

Without interrupting his search, Nagi had asked when and where the helicopter was needed. Three days from now, Crawford had answered. He had then specified the location and given Nagi instructions to bring the blueprints to his office when they were ready. He had then left the room.

And now, less than a quarter of hour after that, Crawford was at his desk, studying the blueprints of a very simply designed building which looked like a manor from the outside and a warehouse from the inside. A central body, an east ward, a west ward. Two stories, one eliminated in the central block to raise the ceiling and accommodate the lab equipment; offices and smaller stores and laboratories in the east ward, living quarters in the west ward. With the details his vision had provided and the devastating simplicity of the architecture, there wasn't really so much to think. Crawford pensively studied the blue prints anyway.

Eyes fixed on the lines, Crawford reflected.

In the light of the current circumstances, he couldn't trust his gut-feelings, his visions or his opinions. But he still could trust the facts. What did he know for sure or, at least, with moderate certainty? Someone was tampering with his mind. His precognition was being blocked. His blocking was directly related to the ritual. Schuldig had been acting strange. Schuldig was trying to seduce him.

Schuldig was trying to seduce him.

That was the piece that didn't fit. It wasn't a secret that telepaths gained the fastest and most complete access to someone's mind through contact in general and sex in particular. It didn't make sense that Schuldig was trying to bed him if he already had what he wanted from him. It revolved all around the ritual. The blocking, the seduction... timing was everything, he never got tired of repeating. Timing... time...

He nearly let a curse slip past his lips. He was focusing on the future, as always. Foolish precognitive. Fool. Fool.

Crawford left the blueprints where they were and walked to the window, his thoughts whirling. His eyes were directed to the city but he didn't really see the buildings, nor the sky.

Yes, it revolved all around the ritual, no doubt about it. But the beginning was just as obvious as the ending. Everything, everything --the blocking, Schuldig's visits at night, the feeling of something missing, the odd behaviors-- everything had started with the trip to Switzerland and the meeting with the Elders. The Elders... They were the key, then. It all started and finished with them. Was it they playing tricks on his mind? What for? They were powerful enough to get what they wanted without having to engage in twisted games. They were too old. Only the young kittens played with the mouse instead of going for the kill. It made no sense with what he knew of them. But if they were not the who, maybe they were the why. He tried to remember, to notice something out of the ordinary during the meeting, to notice something out of the ordinary in the quality of his memories of it. He had studied how telepathy worked, a trained mind could find inconsistencies in the tampering...

Suddenly, he stopped.

Tampering. As he had thought before, when he had refrained from making plans after the vision of the manor, someone was having free access to his mind. Maybe it was not such a good idea to create definite thoughts with that knowledge, with his suspicions and his findings, thoughts that could be spied by a mind-reader. Someone who was probably keeping tabs on him. A telepath. Which led back to Schuldig.

Crawford considered himself an excellent judge of character. And Schuldig wasn't really so difficult to understand. So, a few years ago, Crawford had made sure that Schuldig would keep his distance. And it had worked perfectly till now. A change in the result had to mean a change in the addends. There had to be a powerful reason for Schuldig to get over the blow Crawford had delivered to his pride. Especially at this particular moment. What kind of idiot decided to indulge in his sexual desires less than two weeks from the most important job of his life? Schuldig could be many things, but definitely not an idiot. He needed to get into Crawford's head and badly. And that meant that he wasn't in it, yet.

No, Schuldig couldn't be the source of the problem. That made him the source of the solution.

Going back to his desk, he looked at the blueprints again and, trying to disperse his conclusions even as he reached them, decided to let Schuldig work.


	23. 8

**8.**

  
Nagi was in his room. Farfarello was secured in his cell. Schuldig inhaled deep and put his hand softly on the door to Crawford's office. It was made of wood. Solid, dark, very well varnished. The handle was golden and curvy. Schuldig forced himself to stop thinking and entered without knocking.

The place was a bit dark, but Schuldig had no problem spotting Crawford's silhouette against the big window. He had sensed his mind before coming in; he knew where he would be standing.

Crawford didn't turn to face him. Schuldig nearly smiled. He didn't switch on the lights. He knew that Crawford wouldn't appreciate it.

More calmly than he felt, Schuldig walked to the window. 'Window' maybe wasn't the correct term. It was more like a crystal wall that went from the ceiling to the floor in the western style of high-standing administrative buildings. He stopped when he reached Crawford's side and looked out the window with him. The sun had just gone down, but there would be still some clarity for a few minutes. Tokyo's horizon was hidden by Tokyo itself, after all. Schuldig didn't really understand Crawford's love for the half-light, but he had learned to accept it, just as he accepted Nagi's love for electronics or Farfarello's for blood.

A couple of minutes passed before he perceived how Crawford turned his head to observe him in silence. Schuldig kept his gaze on the city, on the lights getting more and more numerous as the night slowly fell. After a while, Crawford turned back towards the window. Schuldig concentrated on his breathing. No sound passed through the reinforced glass, only light and movement. Schuldig could feel Crawford's body warmth on his right side. They weren't touching but were close enough. It was a chilly evening for September and Schuldig had always been sensitive to the cold. He turned his face to look at Crawford. The precog wore an unreadable expression, as always, and he didn't react to Schuldig's scrutiny. While on the job, Crawford would smirk a lot, would look smug, or angry, or satisfied. When only Schuldig was looking, Crawford would be impassive like a stone. Like the dead. Unable to solve the mystery, Schuldig went back to gazing at the city. The shadows were gaining terrain. It made the lights look brighter. The night hadn't completely fallen yet.

Schuldig tried not to count his own heartbeats as he gathered the courage to make his move. The sunset hadn't been a spectacular one. The sky was an ordinary blue. Schuldig breathed. Crawford did nothing. They stood still like twin statues, looking out an unbreakable, isolated, enormous glass.

Without averting his gaze from the city, Schuldig gently touched Crawford's shirt cuff. He had always had nimble fingers. He released the cuff link. Crawford didn't ask what the fuck he thought he was doing, didn't even look at him. After putting the cuff link in his pocket, Schuldig went back to the cuff. Slowly, his fingers found their way to Crawford's wrist. Skin, bone, hair, veins, tendons... Crawford was warm. Or maybe it was Schuldig who had cold fingers, who knew.

Without looking at him once, Schuldig made his hand creep slowly upwards. Crawford's forearm felt relaxed but strong, like a sleeping lion. Warm, warm, warm. Schuldig's fingers reached the elbow. The skin on the inside was very soft. The shirt was custom-made; Schuldig knew he wouldn't be able to reach the shoulder. Pity. He slid his fingers a bit higher until he could touch the upper arm. Biceps. Sleeping lion. Oh God...

Schuldig noticed his heart was beating faster. He concentrated so that at least his breathing wouldn't give him away.

Crawford kept immobile as Schuldig let his fingers caress the skin on their way back to the wrist. Schuldig lifted all the fingers except the index one; it slid slowly downwards through the irregular surface of Crawford's limp palm and fingers. Then, he passed to the thigh the hand was resting against. Schuldig had never been enamored of Crawford's pants, neither the color nor the fabric. But he couldn't ignore the fact that they covered Crawford's legs. Crawford's ass. Crawford's cock. It was all there, underneath. Schuldig's fingers glided up slowly to the hip. He realized that he had been looking at what he was doing and not at the city for a while now. Since he had touched Crawford's hand, Schuldig believed.

Once in the hip, Schuldig's other fingers joined the party again. Without pressure, merely touching; he couldn't even consider it a stroke.

_In for a penny, in for a pound,_ Schuldig thought, before letting his fingers caress his way towards Crawford's butt.

Crawford's hips were narrow, nearly out of proportion considering the broadness of his shoulders. His ass, Schuldig thought, hadn't changed a single bit since the last time --the only other time-- he had touched it. Firm, rounded. Schuldig thought he could come just now, even without grabbing, without groping, without truly getting his hand on it, only touching it with the tip of his fingers, so softly that it felt rather like hovering over it, as if it were some sacred artifact deserving of worship.

And all the while, all the while, Crawford had kept himself still, as though he was ignoring Schuldig's hand on him. Schuldig couldn't decide if that was making him angry or horny. In a rare bout of self-honesty, Schuldig admitted that it was rather the latter. He was so hard he thought his pants would give way at the seams any minute now.

He forced his hand to move higher. His fingers left behind the waist of the pants and encountered the back of the vest. Unlike the front, it was silk. Schuldig hated Crawford's vests with a passion. Especially this one and especially now. It was another barrier between his fingers and Crawford's back.

Schuldig realized he had lost control of his breathing. He was in the verge of panting now.

He allowed a bit more of pressure to make up for the layers separating their skins. His fingers went up the spine and followed the soft curves of Crawford's back. Powerful, straight, powerful, warm, powerful, warm, warm... when he finally reached the collar of the shirt, Schuldig ordered his fingers to stray to the left, because if he didn't pay homage to those shoulders he might as well die. He left the silk to touch cotton. Schuldig's eyes couldn't help turning for a second towards Crawford's profile. Still, no reaction. He refrained from entering the precog's mind.

_Not yet,_ he told himself.

His eyes and fingers went back to silk and then to the collar. Slowly, they crept under it. At last, Crawford's body gave him a reaction: when the cold fingers touched the skin of his neck, he shuddered. It was quite understated, but for Schuldig it was like the first glass of water in a hungover morning and he drank it as avidly. Fascinated, Schuldig let his fingers gently bury themselves in Crawford's dark hair. His own breathing was labored enough to mask Crawford's in the improbable case his was also.

Schuldig's fingers touched back down the nape and then glided very lightly to the lateral. Then went up again to touch Crawford's ear. Schuldig's cock twitched when he heard Crawford gasp at the contact. He very softly followed the curve of the shell and went down again. Schuldig bit his lips to be able to move on instead of staying there, teasing Crawford's ear all night. It was tempting, so very tempting...

His fingers reached the jaw just at the angle under the joint, eyes placed on it much more heavily than the fingers.

Suddenly, Crawford turned his head and looked at Schuldig. And that was when Hell broke loose.

In the same movement, Crawford reached out, Schuldig grabbed Crawford's glasses and pushed them out of the way, and they both clashed so forcibly together that at first their kiss hurt. And neither of them gave a damn.

They devoured each other without the slightest finesse, pressing against one another so hard that it would have been unpleasant if it hadn't felt so necessary instead. They tried to get their tongues farther and farther in the other's mouth, their fingers deeper and deeper in the other's skin, their bodies closer and closer together.

Schuldig got a grip with both hands of Crawford's hair while Crawford did the same with Schuldig's ass, pushing their groins together, circling and thrusting their hips as if their bodies couldn't understand they weren't really fucking yet.

Mouth moving against Crawford's, Schuldig's hands got restless and tried to touch everywhere at once: face, shoulders, sides, ass, arms, shoulders, hair, nape, shoulders, ass... and all the while, all the while, the blood in his veins was thrumming because his hard cock was rubbing against Crawford's and Crawford's hard cock was rubbing against his.

Breathing heavily through his nose, Schuldig had the presence of mind to decide that they were clearly overdressed. His hands went to Crawford's vest and, foregoing all attempts at fine psychomotor coordination, he pulled brusquely till he heard the fabric give.

He heard Crawford growl disapprovingly as he helped him to get rid of the ruined piece of clothing.

"I'll buy you one," Schuldig promised between kisses, "...what the fuck, I'll buy you twenty."

The only reply Schuldig got was being pushed against the window, Crawford's teeth biting his ear, without violence, but also without delicacy, Crawford's hands pulling the hem of Schuldig's shirt out of his pants, Crawford's cock rubbing unrelenting against his.

The glass was too cold and Crawford's body too hot. Schuldig felt like a stone in the desert, ready to break.

He wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted...

His hands flew to Crawford's tie. It took him a while to re-learn that there was an end that slid to get the knot loose and another one that was fixed. He kept on fumbling with it blindly, mind more preoccupied in eating Crawford's mouth, until the tie admitted defeat and fell forgotten to the floor.

Isolated from everywhere else, only the rustling of fabric, the noise of their breathing, of their kissing, of skin against skin and the occasional subdued moan could be heard in the office.

When Schuldig's hands went to the front of Crawford's shirt, presumably with the same intention they had had before with the vest, Crawford grabbed his wrists and pinned him down against the glass with his weight. He had buried his head in Schuldig's neck, so the telepath couldn't reach his mouth with his anymore.

Due to their restless writhing against one another, it took Schuldig a while to realize that Crawford was immobilizing him. The previous flames of passion were leaving room to the more familiar flames of fury when he felt Crawford's voice. Felt. Not heard.

/Schuldig./

The calling was punctuated by a kiss on his neck.

Schuldig closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the window. His cock was still hard enough to fell trees with it, but his mind had cleared enough to remember he was here for a reason.

Another kiss followed the first one. And then another one. Schuldig abandoned his half-formed plans of shoving Crawford away and breaking free of his grasp and offered no resistance. His body was still vibrating. Crawford's cock was as hot as before through the four layers that separated it from his. He forced to relax and undulated as Crawford's kisses led up his neck, up, up. Aloud, Crawford said nothing, but his lips mouthed nonsense against his ear.

/Something is wrong./

Schuldig identified it as a question. He kept his eyes open this time. It was nearly night now. Crawford smelled like Crawford. He decided it was safe to answer aloud, given the circumstances and how his reply could be interpreted without having heard the question.

"Yes."

The frenzy was gone. They were back to slow movements and sensuality. _Work,_ Schuldig thought,_ it's only work._

Crawford's hands relinquished his hold and unbuttoned Schuldig's shirt slowly. His mouth traveled over Schuldig's cheek to his mouth. This time the kiss was languid, nearly sweet. Nearly.

/Someone has tampered with my mind./

Free again, Schuldig's hands took a while to move from their place against the window. When they did, they went to Crawford's face. Only the tip of his fingers touched skin as they slowly kissed. Cheeks, eyelids, brow, jaw.

/Yes./

When the last button was undone, Crawford didn't take the shirt off of Schuldig, his hands kept traveling south.

/You?/

When Crawford's hands cupped his groin, Schuldig's hands fell to Crawford's shoulders and he broke the kiss.

"Yes!" he hissed, thrusting into Crawford's hand.

Crawford nuzzled his jaw, his neck.

/Why?/

Schuldig swallowed. Crawford's hand was too slow, his touch too light. He shut his eyes tight and undulated his hips with more force. His hands started to pull at Crawford's shirt clumsily, trying to get it off his owner's body. He hoped his mental voice didn't sound as it tasted in the back of his mind.

/Because you trusted me./

Crawford paused for less than a second at receiving the answer. He pulled back a little. Schuldig moaned when Crawford's hands left his groin to make short work of the buttons his own shirt still had in place. Crawford's shirt landed on the floor.

/It was my idea./

Their thighs were still touching. Schuldig's eyes were fixed on Crawford's chest. He didn't understand why he suddenly felt a bit sad. Crawford's body radiated as much heat as before and the glass was starting to warm a little behind him. Schuldig tentatively raised a hand. It landed on Crawford's left pectoral. Again, only the fingertips. Schuldig's other hand followed the example and made contact with the abs.

/Yes./

Crawford kissed him again. The closeness pressed Schuldig's hands fully against the precog's body. Schuldig's arms moved of their own free will till they embraced Crawford's torso.

/Something went wrong./

They started humping against one another. Crawford's hands sneaked under Schuldig's unbuttoned shirt.

/Yes./

Schuldig's nails scratched Crawford's back. Crawford's hands crept down till they cupped Schuldig's ass. It felt as if they were following the steps of some odd dance.

/And you can't fix it./

Schuldig pushed suddenly, but not to break free. They stumbled between kisses, getting away from the window, hands going to each other's pants.

/I'm not sure. There are... it wasn't... ah... some pieces don't fit./

Schuldig concentrated on unbuttoning Crawford's slacks and getting out of his own shirt.

/There's someone else./

Things were speeding up again. Crawford grasped his hair and kissed him forcefully. Schuldig's hand sneaked inside Crawford's underpants to get a feel of the real thing. Oh, God, oh, God... two minutes ago he had thought he wasn't in the mood anymore. Right now he would kill to have this.

/Maybe. I don't know. Probably./

How could Schuldig explain without really telling? Why did Crawford act as if he knew everything already? It was crazy. He had Crawford's cock in his hand and his tongue in this mouth. It was crazy.

/That's why we are doing this./

How could the bastard sound so fucking calm in his head? Schuldig knew he himself was barely coherent. His hand moved rhythmically on Crawford's dick. He missed the touch on his. Well, he had another hand. He palmed himself clumsily with his left. He thought he managed to give his reply tonelessly, without any trace of bitterness, if anything, a light breathlessness.

/Yes./

It was work, after all. Necessary. Work.

/I see./

And Crawford, of course, agreed.

Schuldig had thought that they had been blindly stumbling across the room until he bumped against something. The desk. Crawford's moves didn't look particularly elegant when he pushed the office chair aside and swept everything from the surface of the table down to the floor. It made more noise than Schuldig had expected with such a thick carpet as muffling.

Schuldig inhaled deeply as Crawford pushed him down, his chest against the cold surface of the desk, his back warm with Crawford's slick tongue licking patterns on it.

Schuldig had come to terms with himself a long time ago. He knew what he liked, what turned him on. He got off being the bottom, there was something about submitting, about having a cock up his ass that aroused him to the point of insanity, to the point he would throw away pride and shame and ask for it like a slut, if necessary. But he wouldn't throw away control. And, above all, he wouldn't do it in front of Crawford. Never in front of Crawford. Fucking was fucking and that was fine. But this felt like giving himself and he'd rather die a slave of Eszett, brainwashed and with chronic blue balls than allow this to happen. Not like this.

He gasped and scratched the wooden table when Crawford yanked down his pants and underwear. Schuldig's cock jumped.

_Oh fuck, oh yes, yes, yes..._

He bit back a moan but couldn't help thrusting into the air and despairing at finding nothing. The desk prevented him from touching himself with Crawford's weight pressing him down. He felt Crawford's cock nestling in the crack of his ass, rubbing against it. Schuldig was panting. He pushed back a bit and thrust forward again into the air. Crawford's mouth bit his shoulder.

Gathering all his willpower, and probably some that wasn't his, Schuldig reached awkwardly back without looking and grabbed Crawford's hair. That had to have earned him the attention he needed right now.

"I'm not your secretary," he said through grinding teeth, "nor am I your whore."

Crawford didn't complain about the harsh treatment. He just paused for a minute, thinking.

"Take it or leave it," he said at last.

It was Schuldig's turn to ponder. He felt like whining, he didn't fucking want to think, dammit, he wanted to come, come, come. He tried to focus, not to get distracted by the situation, by Crawford's body on his, by the cock pressed against his bare ass, by Crawford's head next to his, hair tightly gripped in his hand.

"Face to face," Schuldig demanded.

Some seconds passed. Crawford, the unfair bastard, let his fingers stroke very lightly Schuldig's side.

"Deal," he said at last.

Schuldig let go of his hair. Crawford stood up. Schuldig divested himself of the pieces of clothing he still had on. Crawford rummaged in the second drawer. Schuldig lay on his back on the desk, thankfully large enough to accommodate his trunk and head. The fleeting thought crossed his mind, he wished Crawford's laptop had been one of the casualties when all the stuff on the desk had fallen to the floor.

A couple of minutes later, Schuldig arched his back when Crawford finally thrust in.

"Ah...!"

Schuldig's hands went up and back to grip the border of the desk, right above his head. He would think later about the contents of Crawford's second drawer and why they were there. Right now, only the cock in his ass mattered. A cock that wasn't moving. Schuldig wondered if Crawford was letting him adjust or showing off his self-control. He finally felt how Crawford's cock pulled slowly out. It was as thrilling as the last meters climbing up a roller coaster, anticipation as intense as the fall itself. Crawford thrust in again. Schuldig gripped the wood tighter. Oh God, oh God, oh God... Crawford pulled out and went back in again.

"Ah!"

And again.

"Nn."

And again.

And it was then that Schuldig understood that Crawford was the fuck of the year, the fuck of a lifetime.

"Ah!"

And that he had never, ever, ever, wanted anyone as badly, as completely, as thoroughly, as he wanted him.

"Hn!"

In and out. Stretching him, filling him, hot, hard, perfect.

"Mm."

The desk was painfully hard, his legs had no leverage, it was already dark and Crawford's features could barely be distinguished with detail anymore.

"..."

But the movement was unmistakable, the situation was unmistakable. He was being fucked slowly on Crawford's desk and loving it.

"Ah... fuck me... harder..."

He had meant faster, but Crawford understood. Crawford always knew. And sometimes, on rare occasions, he even complied. Crawford leaned forward, braced himself on the table and kissed him.

/Don't change anything. Don't fix anything./

Unable to do much more with his legs, Schuldig crossed them behind Crawford's back and then, feeling the man's cock pounding into him faster and faster, he dove in.

The whole world throbbed.

He had been in Crawford's mind countless times during the past weeks, but never like this. Never like this. He knew where he was. He knew where everything was. He understood the structure, the connections, the secrets... for this short while, he understood Crawford. He was him.

And in the back of his consciousness, or not in the back but rather around it, were the sensations of sex. Of fucking and being fucked, of every blood vessel throbbing, pulsing, of friction and heat and electricity and pleasure, pleasure, pleasure...

Even if he focused on the mind and not the flesh, it was still there. Not in his cock, or in his ass, but in his head. In Crawford's head.

Holy shit, the world was Schuldig's.

Crawford's mind was compartmentalized, each block under a different shield. Associations hidden, severed, scarce. Now he didn't have to search, he didn't have to sneak past the locks, he didn't need to find his way because he was the way, he was the blocks, he was the network. He understood. He understood.

All the doors were open. Schuldig jumped from block to block at the speed of light. The whole matter around him was organic and pulsed. He got to the markers in no time. He understood the network, he was the network. The zone was this one, there was no doubt. The memories had been there. They were not. Crawford had had it all the time in his head without knowing, the fool. For a telepath, it was obvious there had been blocks here that weren't there now. They had been deleted, not hidden. The traces were obvious now. No retrieval was possible, they were gone for good. It didn't look like an accident. It hadn't been an accident. The deleting work had been thorough but fine. It must have taken a lot of time. It was a good job, a very good job. He would have never noticed if he hadn't been granted complete access, if he weren't the network. But he was.

A spike of something too good to understand pierced though his consciousness. Fuck, he had to hurry up.

He flew towards the day he had done the shielding. What memories would be left of that? He had also...

_What. The. Fuck._

He skidded to a halt. For a moment, he didn't know what he was sensing. It was as if, in the organic universe of Crawford's mind, someone had dropped a dollop of tar. It tied something, blocking the flow. Schuldig got closer. He extended his perception. He was the network. He knew.

_Shit._

He had found Crawford's gift. Nagi would be proud. Crawford's precognition wasn't different from any other block of information. Or rather, it didn't look different, but it was. The associations were also unlike the others, there were more of them but they branched notably less. The feeling was different. Most of them weren't active. It was... someone had placed a lock on Crawford's precognition. It was impossible that he hadn't noticed. In fact, Schuldig had proof that he had. The unit that kept Crawford's awareness of the blocking wasn't too far away. But he hadn't said anything, he hadn't...

_Don't change anything,_ he had said, _don't fix anything._

Crawford knew. And suspected that, whoever had done this, was keeping tabs on him to watch if the result was the expected. Schuldig didn't know if things made more sense now, or less. He needed to think. In his own head.

He examined the blocking again, looking for some signature, some link to another telepath's head. If the stranger was keeping tabs on Crawford, they weren't located there. Maybe he should find the back door.

_Don't change anything. Don't fix anything._

Fuck, what was the point in letting him in, then? He wanted to feel frustrated, to feel angry, but he was inside Crawford's mind and their bodies were having sex and he couldn't really focus on his emotions when he wasn't in the brain that generated them, and currents of electric pleasure were going through him in waves, each minute at a faster pace, with higher intensity, and...

He had very little time left.

For the fraction of a second, he felt tempted to use it to know what Crawford truly thought.

_For fuck's sake,_ he snapped to himself, _you already know what he thinks._

He stuck to his previous plan, he traveled to the memories of the day he had put the shields. It wasn't in the same zone that the other deleted units, its associations were more temporal than emotional. The structure was starting to throb more intensely. Schuldig had trouble focusing. The associations that lead to the physical sensation of the present were more and more numerous, they were everywhere now. Schuldig couldn't ignore them, he didn't want to ignore them, they felt so good, so damn good...

He went faster. Another spike of pleasure. He reached the date. The events of that day were there. And another spike. It was calling him, so sweet...

The memory had disappeared. Erased. Like the others. What a fine, fine job. There was an association. Oh, shit, so good... the pulsing was overwhelming. Like being in the heart and not the brain. He followed the association. There was something left of a memory, Crawford waking up and Schuldig telling him to go to sleep again. The time code was multiple, the night he had shielded the thoughts and the night he had tried to uncover them. Or maybe not like being in the heart, but in the cock, the throbbing so rhythmical, like the beat of music. Like the cadence of sex. Something had to have happened between the two memories. He started to search. He was the network. Again, another wave of bliss. The network was overloaded. Oh, fuck, it was nearly there. It was...!

Schuldig went back to his own mind so fast that it was nearly like a physical blow. His body forced him to focus, though. At some point he must have loosened his grip on the table and started to cling to Crawford's shoulders instead. Crawford was still leaning on him, panting over him, eyes closed, face relatively visible in the darkness, near as it was to Schuldig's. Blessed night of Tokyo, never dark enough to blind a man's eyes. Schuldig licked his lips and suppressed a moan. Crawford had taken Schuldig's cock in his hand and was stroking in time with his thrusts. Schuldig felt a drop of sweat fall on his skin. He gasped as he felt Crawford's cock hit the jackpot.

"Shit!"

Everything was thrumming, his whole body in tension, straining so hard to reach the peak, to get there, to...

"Ah!"

Crawford groaned and thrust even deeper, keeping the angle. Schuldig's body moved on its own to meet his thrusts. More drops of sweat fell on Schuldig. He didn't care, he wanted to climax. He needed it. Now.

"Make me come... make me come..."

Crawford grunted, his cock grew even harder in Schuldig's ass. His thumb pressed right under the head of Schuldig's dick. In and out, in and out, slick, hot, there, fuck.

_Fuck._

Digging his nails with viciousness like a cat sliding down a creek, Schuldig came. For the shortest time, life was beautiful and whole and fucking great and made sense, or maybe not, but ah, yes, yesss...!

Slowly, so slowly, he came down from ecstasy. He had his mouth open, but knew he hadn't made a sound. It was Crawford, instead, who was grunting again, still pounding his ass, still sweating on him. He had the cutest frown of concentration on him. It was nearly as ridiculous as his lashes.

Schuldig felt him shudder. He drank Crawford's expressions like a dying man would the promise of heaven. Blessed night of Tokyo. A hundred times blessed.

Crawford didn't let his weight down on him. After some time to regain his breath and enjoy the afterglow, he slid out of Schuldig and left him space. Schuldig was grateful, because now everything hurt, especially his shoulder blades and end of his back, which had supported his weight against the desk. Tomorrow he would have bruises there, he knew. But it had been worth it. Fuck yeah, it had.

He stepped down from the desk. Crawford had gotten rid of the condom and was putting on his pants. Schuldig didn't have the slightest intention to bother dressing when the shower was less than twenty steps away. But first...

"Crawford..." he called, nearing him.

Before he could continue, Crawford paused in his dressing and put his fingers on Schuldig's mouth.

/I can't know./

Schuldig closed his eyes. Not that he didn't understand, but he just... he opened his eyes again but didn't look at Crawford. He walked away without bothering to pick up his clothes. He had enough messes to clean up already.

He had come here today looking for answers. His theory was now confirmed, but it had only led to more questions. And he was running out of time.

Schuldig left the room and closed the door behind him.


	24. 7

**7.**

It was driving him crazy. He had talked to Nagi today, explained everything he had seen in Crawford's mind. The kid had just listened with extreme attention, knowing that using Crawford's precognition was out of the question now. Knowing that using Crawford was out of the question. Someone was keeping tabs on him.

Neither of them knew how they were going to pull off their stunt without Crawford. Nor how they should deal with him, were they to succeed. Would they tell him the truth? Would they have to kill him?

Schuldig turned and lay on his side. His wall wasn't much more interesting than his ceiling.

They had agreed to meet again tomorrow after the mission. They both needed time to think, to understand what was happening, to come up with a new plan.

_There's someone else._

Crawford had known. Now Schuldig regretted not having dug deeper in Crawford's personal opinions. He berated himself. His silly pride had gotten in the way. What was he, fifteen? Now Schuldig wasn't sure what Crawford knew, what he assumed, what he believed. Was he trying to get back to his old treacherous thoughts against Eszett? Had he become, on the contrary, totally loyal to them? Was he trying not to take a side yet, unsure of the external influences that might be manipulating him? And if so, how come he had let Schuldig in?

The realization hit him and Schuldig froze. He stared at the wall with eyes wide open. Crawford had known his game. He had known and had allowed it. He knew what Schuldig was doing, knew that he was only trying to get in his head and not so much in his pants. And, aware of the presence of another telepath in his mind, he had granted Schuldig access.

The thing was, if the cards were on the table and Crawford had already decided to let Schuldig in, why had he had sex with him? He could have just lowered his shields for him. Like opening his mouth and saying "aah". The sex had been only a method to sneak past his defenses; it made no sense once the defenses had been willingly withdrawn.

_That,_ Schuldig reminded himself, _is not important now._

He had to focus. Only one week left and he was not establishing priorities. Every time he let his mind wander on its own, it went back to last night. And not to the riddle of this third party, of blocked gifts and deleted thoughts. No. It went back to Crawford fucking him on the desk, dark figure moving against his prone body, hard cock going in and out, eyes closed in concentration as he came, buried in him.

Schuldig drew a deep breath and tried to get his mind out of the gutter.

He wanted to do it again.

_Aaarrghhhh!_

Exasperated with himself, Schuldig turned anew, kicking the sheets out of the way.

_Focus!_

There was someone playing with Schwarz. But who? And why? And how? Obviously a telepath, a really good one. Maybe even better than Schuldig himself. There weren't many. He had to make Nagi look into it. Schuldig's gut feeling was that it was a team and not a one-man job. If he was right, one of the members was probably a precog. Telepathy was dependent on distance, and telepathic shields were extremely sensitive to any attempt to sneak under them. To interferences in their surroundings, as well. Crawford and Schuldig worked closely together; it would be difficult for a telepath to spy on them without Schuldig noticing. Not for the length of time this attack would have required to be planned out. Jobs this fine demanded exhaustive research. It couldn't have passed under Schuldig's radar. Therefore, it hadn't been a spy in the distance, but in time. A precog. A good one. A very good one. Because Crawford was obsessively anal in his counter-measures against other precognitives' scrying. Never saying anything important aloud, never stepping a toe out of his rehearsed path. It had been Crawford's idea to hold their meetings in Schuldig's mental room. It had been for him that Schuldig had learned what that was, how he should create it, and the convenience of using it.

Okay, so one hell of a telepath and one hell of a precognitive. Maybe more: certain psychics could add their powers; that would explain the accuracy. A great telepath and a pool of clairvoyants? A collective of both?

If there had been a rival team with those characteristics operating anywhere near Tokyo in the last month, Nagi would find out.

That would solve the who, but not the why. Every team of Eszett, every psychic from Rosenkreuz, despised the ones below them and hated the ones above. It made no sense to carry out such an elaborated mind-fuckery if the ultimate goal was Schwarz's destruction. It had to be something else.

Schuldig rubbed his eyes. He didn't get it. Whoever had done this knew for a fact that Schwarz was a team of traitors. Why not report? That would take them out of the game. Why delete only their plans from Crawford's head? It was as if they were taunting them, mocking them, playing with them. Schuldig didn't appreciate it.

_Kill me, report me, brainwash me if you want, son of a bitch, but stop giving me headaches,_ he thought.

It was useless. The more he thought about it, the less he understood.

He jumped out of bed and, barefoot, opened the door. The apartment was dark. It was very late and tomorrow they had an all-important mission which was going to take the whole day and which required the presence of all of them. And here he was, unable to sleep, going to the kitchen for a glass of water, like a kid afraid of what might hide under his bed.

His feet paused for a moment when he walked by Crawford's bedroom.

He wanted to do it again.

Schuldig tightened his fist and resumed his way to the kitchen. The silence was eerie.

In his way back to his bedroom he didn't waver in front of anyone's door.


	25. 6

**6.**

The girl in his arms was light. Crawford was moderately satisfied with the mission, but there were still some points that worried him. He ignored the din of the helicopter and dismissed the odd sensation that flying instilled in every walking creature. He had a lot to think about. He didn't want to risk it, though. Every thought he fixed in his brain would be there for the taking. It was safer not to draw conclusions. Safer, but not easier.

Schuldig was frantic, even if he went to great lengths to hide it. The telepath didn't look as if he had been getting much sleep lately. Crawford couldn't blame him; he had been delegating a lot to him. Things Crawford wasn't even conscious of, he was sure. But it couldn't be helped. He stopped himself from thinking too deeply about the subject.

He shifted the body in his arms. Well, maybe after some time the girl wasn't so light, after all.

The mission had been a success. The key element to the ritual was in their hands. Schreient was no more. Weiß had been riled up, but a handful of kittens were not a real menace. The Elders would congratulate them. Their arrival to Japan had already been programmed. Everything was going according to schedule. At least on the surface.

In the front seats --pilot and copilot-- Schuldig and Farfarello exchanged friendly banter. Schuldig sounded tense, Farfarello utterly relaxed and at ease. He had killed today, he would be happy for a couple of days.

The lights of Tokyo were already under them. Flying was sure a fast way to travel.

Crawford avoided thinking of Nagi. Of what he had probably done today. Crawford couldn't be sure, he couldn't know, he couldn't think about is. His visions, after all, had multiple interpretations. Schuldig hadn't understood Crawford's decision to abandon a team member under the debris. He had protested in Crawford's mind, where nobody else would hear his insubordination. But there was always a reason to everything Crawford did and Schuldig knew it, so he had finally relented after checking that, as he had been told, Nagi was still alive. It just hadn't occurred to him to also check on Tot. And for that, Crawford was infinitely grateful.


	26. 5

**5.**

_Shit, shit, shit, shit!_

Schuldig stalked to Crawford's office. Fuck the pretense of calmness, fuck everything. Nagi hadn't come back, he had barely slept three hours, Crawford's gift was rendered useless and he had been stupid enough to overlook the most obvious lead they had, yeah, right there under his fucking nose.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid, blind, stupid!_

He entered the room without knocking. The intense light --fucking windows-- hurt his sleep-deprived eyes. Crawford raised his head from what he was doing, whatever that was. Schuldig knew he himself looked like shit. He couldn't really understand how Crawford could keep such a pristine refreshed appearance. It had to be all that light flooding the office; it was surely blinding him.

Schuldig closed the door and, this time without rushing, he neared his leader. Crawford didn't ask. Acknowledging Schuldig's presence had been enough questioning and they both knew it. When Schuldig got past the desk, Crawford pushed his chair back a little and turned to face him.

/Let me in_,/_ Schuldig asked, leaning forward.

Crawford looked at him speculatively for a second. Then he put his hand on Schuldig's nape and drew him in a kiss. Schuldig braced himself on the armrests of the chair --this scene was vaguely familiar-- and relaxed a bit. Crawford tasted like mint. Toothpaste? Candy? Breath refresher?

The shields were lowered, locks open to his prying, but Schuldig wasn't the network anymore. It took him a while to find the right connections, to follow the right path. But he got there. And found what he had been searching for. Or rather, found what he had known wasn't there anymore.

Schuldig had obsessed about the who and the why. He had been stupid. The key question here was the when. And it had been so obvious that Schuldig didn't get how he hadn't felt it kicking his butt all this time.

Schuldig wasn't the network anymore, but it was still easy to sense the tampering. It had all started with that blasted trip to Switzerland, the meeting with the Elders. Discarding the Elders as subjects didn't exclude the meeting as the place; it couldn't because, place or not, it had been the time. Their plans had been there before. Their plans hadn't been there after. Two plus two. Four.

As expected, he couldn't find a trace of the telepath who had done it, no lead to follow, no signature. But there was a lump in the chain of events of that day, a slightly sloppier work. Not because the job had been rushed or unskilled, but because to successfully trick Crawford, they couldn't have left a void where the big chunk of memories had been deleted. It took quite a long time to tamper with someone's mind on that level. During that time, memories had to have been generated, registering what was happening. Memories which had been meticulously erased. Crawford would have suspected right away if several hours in his recent history were missing, much more in those blocks that were ordered following a time code. And thus, the foreign telepath had been forced to create a false memory. Totally inconsequential, of Crawford alone in the room of his hotel, not doing anything remarkable, not generating ideas which would raise suspicions later. Just an innocuous patch. But a patch, nonetheless. Glaringly obvious if you bothered to look in the right direction.

Schuldig could kick himself later, now he had work to do.

He went back to his own mind. Funny, how the subconscious worked. He was on the brink of climbing to Crawford's lap, one hand on the back of the chair, one knee on the seat, next to Crawford's thigh.

Slowly, he broke the kiss but didn't pull away. He had his eyes open, but was too close to focus on anything, so he didn't try. Crawford's breath tickled his lips. It was warm.

He wanted to do it again.

So he closed the gap and kissed Crawford once more. Nibbling, grazing, nipping, getting his tongue in, so good... he felt Crawford's hand releasing his nape and sliding towards his shoulder. Schuldig needed to get closer, to touch more, to...

Firmly but without violence, Crawford pushed him away.

Schuldig tried with all he got to keep his face impassive and his expression neutral. He tried harder than he had ever tried to shield his thoughts, to defeat the bullies in Rosenkreuz, to pass his tests, to feign his loyalty. He tried, tried, tried. And still, after looking in his eyes for two seconds...

"Stop seeking to get burned," Crawford told him.

A bucket of cold water thrown at him couldn't have made a bigger impact. Schuldig tried again. He smiled. Sweetly, blandly, he smiled. And then, he sent a sharp jab into Crawford's unguarded mind.

Crawford hissed but repressed the instinct to shove Schuldig away. The precog looked surprised for the first time since Schuldig had known him.

Schuldig's smile turned into a smirk.

/Likewise,/ he said before straightening up and walking away.

He didn't give a fuck about the consequences. Lashing out at your team's leader was something that just wasn't done. Not twice, at least. But he was fed up. He was working his ass off for the team, investigating for Nagi, plotting for Crawford, covering up for Farfarello, slaving away for Eszett... he was doing everybody's work without complaint, not asking for a thing, not making a fuss and still, everybody treated him like...

Schuldig reached for the door and went out without closing it behind him.

He was fed up.

\----------

The night was hours away, but he couldn't care less. Tokyo was a gigantic city. You could find whatever you were searching for in every possible moment of the day. If only you knew where to look.

He took the subway because he wouldn't be able to keep an eye on the car and he didn't feel like tracking down the pieces after he was done with what he had come here for.

Schuldig, as a telepath, usually fled from direct violence. If he had to kill, a shot to the head was fast and surprisingly clean. If he hadn't, he didn't truly understand why you had to touch anyone to hurt them. Traditional torture was just not his thing.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you wanted to get physical, to feel bones give under your fists, to punch, to hurt, to destroy. And when that happened, you didn't want a defenseless victim to hear the screams. Oh, no. You wanted someone strong, someone who under other circumstances could kill you. Because beating the shit out of someone who thinks himself invincible was fucking sweet. And that was what Schuldig needed right now. To kick an invincible ass.

Because, who gets off slaughtering sheep? The real thrill was beating the wolf.


	27. 4

**4.**

Nagi couldn't stop thinking about it. He had had one day to pull himself together, to make arrangements, to prepare to go home. One day. It was laughable.

And now, in front of his computer, in his own room at last, he couldn't stop thinking about it.

He had resurrected Tot.

Maybe it had been a trick of his mind? Maybe Farfarello's blade hadn't really reached her, maybe he had been confused, maybe...

He had resurrected Tot. Without getting killed in the process. He had supposed that Mother Nature would take a life for a life, that the energy taken to revive a body would necessarily kill another, but he was still alive and Tot was still alive, and he suspected that Crawford knew, but Crawford wasn't on his side anymore, and if Eszett caught wind of what he had done, if Crawford told them before Schuldig could restore him to normal, then...

"Nagi!"

With a start, Nagi realized that Schuldig was in his room and had probably been calling him for a while. Nagi looked at him. He hoped he didn't look as scared as he felt inside.

Schuldig cocked his head, pensive.

"Nagi, we need to talk," the telepath said. "But finish what you were doing first."

Schuldig walked to the bed and dropped down on it without asking for permission. Nagi overlooked the rudeness --it was Schuldig, after all-- and turned back to his computer. He hadn't been doing anything for a while and they both knew it.

His thoughts jumped towards Schuldig and the telepath lead them to his mental room.

Nagi had to be extra-careful with his thoughts on this starlit plane. Anything could slip easily and he didn't want more people to know of his secret.

"What secret?" Schuldig asked.

Nagi glared at him and Schuldig looked as if he was gathering patience when he usually had none.

"Listen kid," he said, tired. "I don't give a fuck about a lot of things, okay? I won't pry into your porn folder because I have more pressing matters to attend, get it? So don't get all defensive just because you were thinking shit _at me_ and I happened to hear it."

For once, the telepath was right.

"Okay," Nagi said.

"Alright," Schuldig closed the argument. He then proceeded to tell the kid everything that he had found out until now. Nagi tried to assimilate everything he was learning and what it implied. What had they gotten themselves into?

"Hey kid, you okay?" Schuldig asked.

Nagi must have looked really bad if Schuldig was worrying. The telepath wasn't known for his compassionate heart and deep consideration of others.

"I'm just under a bit of stress," he answered.

Schuldig's face told quite eloquently what he thought of that statement.

"I need you to get into Eszett's system," Schuldig explained. "Search for the registers of entries and departures of their headquarters in Bern. Find out who was there aside from Crawford and the Elders. Check the hotel, the airport, get into the private security systems, the Swiss National Defense, every place Crawford visited for more than twenty minutes. I need you to find out who else was in it. Public buildings, parks, whatever. And contrast all the names you get with Rosenkreuz's best operatives, their aliases, their descriptions, their cars. Check Rosenkreuz's files. Find out who the hell has enough skill to pull this stunt on us. Track their moves, if they've been to Switzerland lately, if Crawford's flight had a stopover in Austria... check everything, but find out who's been playing us, why they have been playing us and how we can get back at them before it's too fucking late."

Nagi looked at him for a short while and thought that Schuldig also was under a bit of stress.

"Schuldig," he started, hesitant, "what you are asking for... I need to do it without anyone noticing I'm looking into it. That means... Schuldig, that's a month's job minimum. More, if I have to work for Schwarz. You need... I need you to narrow it down a bit."

This time there was no furniture in the room. Only the tunnel lights and the galaxies around them.

Schuldig had closed his eyes, which Nagi interpreted as the manifestation of the telepath thinking hard. Nagi kept his mind carefully blank. Suddenly, Schuldig opened his eyes.

"Listen," he said, "look only... find out where Crawford was from 11:30h to 16:00h... no, better 17:00h, to be sure... August 22th. That's... that's the time code of the blocks missing. That's when it was done. We have the when... if you find out the where, you'll have the who."

Schuldig looked excited. Maybe they had a chance, after all. Everything that was left was deducing the why and finding out how to stop the whole thing.

In four days.

Nagi nodded to Schuldig and cut the link. He had a lot to do.


	28. 3

**3.**

"It's Weiß, let's do it," Farfarello said.

For once, Schuldig didn't mind having to work with the madman. Anything was preferable to Crawford. He even welcomed the disturbing shriek of the blade when Farfarello flipped it out. However, this was not a sensible moment to go on a killing spree. Not in broad daylight and not in this part of the city. Plus, Weiß was off-limits. Before Crawford had forgotten about it, he had mentioned they played a part in the grand design. And, however badly Schuldig hated him right now, or however stupid he sounded when he tried to talk big, Crawford was the best at what he did.

But maybe Farfarello wasn't referring to Takatori Junior. Maybe he just wanted to take out the girl. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if it kept Farfarello happy. Crawford hadn't mentioned her before. She was so oblivious, so unaware of how closely the death was staring at her, of how fragile a human body was... she just said her goodbyes to the Takatori kid and started to walk down the street. What was her name? Yes, Sakura...

"Wait," Schuldig said. "I've got an idea."

The coloring was different, Schuldig knew, but in the orange light of sunset, being too far away to distinguish the features clearly, the girl had looked exactly like the vessel, like Abyssinian's sister. Even as he talked with Farfarello about telepathy and what not, Schuldig started to consider the possibilities. Maybe they could use that chick. She would buy time for Schwarz. Maybe even ruin the ritual. He just needed to find a good excuse to convince Crawford, a lie close enough to the truth so that Sakura's abduction made sense from Eszett's perspective, from the perspective of the team that was messing with Crawford's head. And, if there was something Schuldig truly excelled at, it was finding the right lies for the right occasion.

With a set goal in mind, Schuldig started the car.

\--------------

Pulling out his weapon from the guy's throat, Farfarello thought that the Elders should come to Tokyo more often. It was like Kritiker's pawns were lining up at his door, begging to be weeded out. Of course, he was most glad to comply.

Farfarello let the body fall, gently whispering in the dead man's ear the words he should repeat to God when he faced him in a minute or two.

It was fun to see everybody struggling, each for their own reasons. Lack of faith was another kind of faith, the most reassuring, in fact, because it left no place to doubts or uncertainty. It was the others who didn't know. He was at peace.

Farfarello considered that this was turning into a great week.

\---------

It was late. Maybe two or three in the morning. Schuldig didn't care enough to turn his head and look at the alarm clock. It had been a long day. The Elders had finally arrived. It had been quite the show, really. Even Crawford had decided to show off, making weird acrobatics to stop Weiß' advances. The excuse he had come up with to use Sakura against the swordsman hadn't been the brightest idea he had ever had, but Eszett usually approved of mind-fuckery for mind-fuckery's sake, so it had been nonetheless an applauded initiative. No one had noticed that it was not her connection to Abyssinian but her resemblance to his sister that made her valuable. No one suspected a thing. Not even Crawford.

_I can't know._

Or maybe he did suspect but was carefully avoiding a confirmation. Maybe he was keeping a whole new section of his mind as an asteroid field, full of vague ideas which acted as a diversion tactic against telepathic invasions. One never knew with him. He was too good at playing. Good enough to have been an excellent telepath if Nature hadn't swapped gifts and given him clairvoyance.

Good at playing. Now Schuldig understood why Crawford had fucked him. It was not about the access, much less about desire. It was just the perfect excuse to drive away uninvited prying. A precog who 'saw' the scene would only interpret it as two men having intercourse. They both had been careful with the dialog, Crawford always insisted on it. Schuldig had called him paranoid more than once, at least until all this mess started and proved the bastard right. And if a telepath were the one to fish for information, the memory of sex would be powerful enough to hide the deeper intentions behind it. The pleasure _per se_ didn't stay in the mind, but lovemaking was a very invasive activity in terms of data storage. It pervaded everything and the associations were so strong that it made it difficult to see beyond the act to find the thoughts. For not mention that not a lot of people would try to dig into it. It was like hacking the Prime Minister's computer to watch his porn. Gay porn. Didn't make a lot of sense.

Schuldig got it now. The lube and condoms in the drawer, Crawford's passivity to the touches, the sex, the negative to knowing, the kiss, the rejection... it was all planned. Everything Crawford did or allowed to happen was a calculated risk or a strategical move. Everything.

Rubbing his eyes, Schuldig thought that he wanted to sleep. Only three days left. A bit less. He was so tired of everything... only three days and this would be over, for better or worse.

He breathed deeply.

/Nagi,/ he called, /how is it going?/

At first, only silence came back as an answer. Schuldig knew that Nagi was awake in front of the computer. He could feel Nagi's exhaustion, too.

/I'm working on it,/ the kid's mental voice was calm and cold. Serious. He truly was a mini-Crawford. Schuldig wished with all his might that Nagi wouldn't grow to be such a bastard, though.

Schuldig turned and closed his eyes, trying to order his brain to fall asleep.


	29. 2

  
**2.**

Nagi took out a secondary computer and screen from the cupboard. He set all the equipment up and switched the CPUs on.

When you entered Eszett's systems it was not a matter of 'if', but of 'when' one was going to be caught. The organization invested quite the sum of money in electronic security and counter-hackering measures. Conversely, that forced Nagi to invest quite an amount of time in keeping up with the new developments, measures and counter-measures. It was a hassle, but Nagi considered it to be part of his job, part of belonging to Schwarz, part of being the best. To be honest, he actually liked it.

Nagi prepared the machines and started the laborious task of getting in the Net.

He made the signal jump from server to server all over the world. He configured the firewalls. He chose some of the servers according to location so that other teams of both Eszett and rival organizations would be suspected if the tracking programs got stuck at that particular point. He used a server in Tokyo as one of the first decoys, easy to discard as false in the early stages of their searching.

When he had selected at least two dozen nodes to bounce the signal, he started a tracking simulation program in the second computer. That would act as a chronometer, letting Nagi know when the signal was about to be traced back to him. Or when it would be the best moment to break the connection and point to an specific server.

He then got to work.

He would start with Rosenkreuz. Every other information he obtained was going to be cross-referenced with that. Eszett had thousands, maybe millions of operatives on payroll and it would be tiresome sorting out the psychics from the dead minds. Rosenkreuz's database was far more manageable. All the profiles were neatly tagged. Nearly every psychic under Eszett had come out of Rosenkreuz's grounds. If Nagi wanted to find out who were the best telepaths and precognitives out there, Rosenkreuz's system was the place to go to. And, unlike Eszett's, the security programs were easy to evade, if you knew how.

He downloaded the files without studying them. That could be done off-line, later.

It was show time, now. He started the simulator and let his fingers fly on the keyboard. He used a program to hack into another operative's account. One of the administrative workers. Not a very important one, just enough to have access to the most innocuous data. Nagi wasn't interested in experiments or high-risk projects now. The registers of the entries and departures from Eszett's HQ were extremely easy to find. They weren't exactly Top Secret amongst all the classified information Eszett kept. Crawford had signed in at 16:50h. Nagi didn't bother checking the other guests. He downloaded the list just in case, then got out of there. He checked the secondary screen. He typed on.

Crawford's flight had landed at 21:27h the night before. Nagi checked the hotel. It was past midnight when Crawford had checked in. Under his own name. The hotel didn't electronically register when its guests went out and came back, they used the keys for that, in the traditional manner. That was a problem. It meant that Nagi would have to review the recordings of the security cameras for that day, and he really wasn't looking forward to it. He was already pressed for time and even with the fast forward option it would take hours to check them all. Most places didn't use tapes anymore, but sent the digital footage from all the cameras to a server placed in the facilities of the security company hired. They usually kept the recordings for a month or two before deleting them. He hoped that was the case here.

As he started to search, he remembered what Schuldig had told him about the subtle art of manipulating and the complex science of tampering.

_A good lie is just a truth told differently._

Schuldig deceived with the truth most of the time. Good telepaths did. And the guy they were searching for was supposed to be outstanding.

Nagi searched for the recordings of August 22th from 10:30h to 12:00h and from 15:30h to 16:30h. Schuldig had said that the patch contained memories of Crawford in his hotel room. Lies that resembled truths... chances were that the tampering had occurred in Crawford's hotel room. Chances were, that Crawford had known the offenders, that he had let them in. Maybe, even, that they had agreed to meet. But why?

Nagi checked the secondary screen. Time was running out. Once he had entered Eszett's system, no matter that he had logged out minutes ago, he could still be traced unless he disconnected completely from the Net. He would need some time to check the recordings and contrast his findings with Rosenkreuz's profiles. He waited until the signal reached a server in Ukraine and then stepped out of the Net. He hoped Eszett was stupid enough to suspect the team working there. Nagi had never liked Grün.

\--------

Sitting on the bed, Sakura felt truly miserable. It hadn't been her fault. She hadn't wanted to hurt Aya, she would never...

_Bang!!_

She shivered and held back the tears. The loud noise of the gun was playing again and again in his head.

Schuldig was right, Aya would never forgive her, he wouldn't want to see her face ever again. Never. Aya...

She didn't want to cry, but the sobs came unexpectedly. She had only wanted... and now she would never be able to see him again. But maybe she could still do something for him. Maybe...

Sakura forced herself to stop crying.

\-------

Nagi's frustration was showing in the form of a slight frown. The cameras from inside the hotel had stopped working from 11:08h to 11:23h in the morning and from 15:52 to 16:07h in the afternoon. There were several conclusions to draw from that. First, and most important, that he couldn't see who had entered Crawford's room. Second, that there wasn't only a precog and a telepath involved, there was also a kinetic, probably a electrokinetic. Maybe a telekinetic if he or she was good enough to undo the damage and restore the cameras to working order without having them in sight.

Nagi went online again. He checked the rest of the recordings. The result was the same. The cameras outside the building, even the ones in the parking garage had been sabotaged. Not the ones in the kitchen and laundry, though. Nor the ones in the corridors on the other floors, only on Crawford's.

Nagi leaned back in his chair. It was not all the cameras that had been blocked, only those which watched the path to Crawford's room, only those which watched the path their enemies had followed. Nagi pressed his lips together. The parking. They had arrived by car.

He suddenly attacked the keyboard again. He searched for a map of Bern first, a satellite one. The US army had the best of those. He then thought that maybe it was not necessary to overdo it. Maybe a tourist map would come in even handier. He searched for one. He located the buildings around the hotel. A bakery, two boutiques, apartments, a jewelry store, a travel agency. He checked the jewelry store. There were no recordings of security cameras available. Nagi shook his head; even if there were, they wouldn't be directed at the hotel parking. There had to be another way.

He went back to the hotel's system. He tried getting into the parking registers. Sometimes, just sometimes, a team was good enough to feel overconfident. Sometimes, a team decided to overlook silly details because they knew they wouldn't be caught anyway.

The hotel had five stars. That meant that the parking wasn't automatized, maybe even a valet would park the cars, who knew. Nagi got into the register and searched for entries and departures to find a match. Nagi frowned. There was a car registered whose arrival fit, but strangely enough only the plate number was noted with the hour. The other registers also showed owner and parking place, as well as the hotel room. No departure register was to be found.

Nagi closed his eyes. Was that the car? Why was there an uncompleted register? It was much more attention-calling than a false entry or a complete lack thereof. The departure had been hidden, why not the entrance?

Nagi massage his temples. It was already late in the night. He wanted to sleep.

What if... what if the incoming cars were noted down before there was a contact with the driver? What if the team had erased the memories of the valet/watcher/whatever only after the notation had taken place? Unlike the departures, which would be only registered after letting the person in charge know. It would be beyond easy for a telepath to order that person not to write it down, not to remember they had been there. It made sense.

Nagi opened his eyes again and started to investigate the plate number.

\---------

Schuldig let his weight fall unceremoniously on the bed. It was late, very late. And he had fucked up royally this time. He had thought that suggesting that Abyssinian wouldn't want to see her ever again would keep Sakura from trying to contact him. That it would take her will to escape out of her. That she would stay put. And now not only had they had to spend two hours chasing after her, but also after the avatar. They had managed to catch Sakura again, but the Fujimiya girl remained unfound. Two days from the ritual they had lost the vessel. And it was all his fault.

Trying to decide if he was too anxious to sleep or too sleepy to feel anxious, he fell into slumber.

\----------

The plate number belonged to a rental car. The name of the person who had rented it that day didn't appear in Rosenkreuz's database, but it did in the airport's records. That same person had arrived in a flight from Dublin. The teams assigned in Ireland weren't good enough to have orchestrated this. Nagi had then dug a bit deeper into the flight records. The same name appeared in a flight from Vienna to Dublin. That made more sense. Except for the sloppiness of not changing their passport and identity, of course. But, again, maybe they didn't feel threatened by details. Overconfidence was Schwarz's best friend when it was their enemies who committed it.

Nagi had heard his teammates come back home, one by one. The last one had been Schuldig. Tomorrow was going to be a very daring day. Nagi didn't want to think about it, so he concentrated again on the task at hand.

So, their enemies had probably come from Austria, or at least tried to lead them into believing so. Rosenkreuz. Mmm. Nagi needed more. Something useful. A name, a motive, anything.

Sighing tiredly, he investigated the rental car company. It was a franchise; that meant that every subcontractor kept their own archives in different servers with different classification systems. More work. Nagi sighed again and located in a map the branches and offices. But of course. The airport. He had been stupid, it was obvious where the car had been rented. Obvious. It had probably been included in the data he had found out about the car. He had just managed to overlook it. He was just so tired...

So, the airport. That actually gave Nagi hope. Airports had tons of cameras and it was usually inconvenient to deactivate their signals because if there was some massive malfunction, the alarms of the airport would go off like crazy. And no team wished for that sort of attention upon them during a job.

So, Nagi got into the security recordings of the airport. These would be kept for even longer than the ones from the hotel. There were more of them, too. Nagi searched for the plans of the airport, the location of the cameras and where the rental car counter was. He checked the time registered on the contract. He looked for the recording of that camera, that day, that time.

"I got you," Nagi whispered.

Three people could be seen nearing the counter. They acted totally inconspicuous, normal, natural... but it was the time and it was the place. So, they had to be the people.

Nagi had them. That would have to be enough for now, because he had the mother of all headaches and he was on the verge of falling asleep in from of the computer. Dawn couldn't be too far away.

After making sure he had everything saved on his hard drive, Nagi switched off the computers and dropped on the bed without bothering to change or get under the covers. Nearly as soon as his face touched the pillow, he fell asleep.


	30. 1

**1.**

They were not usually a talkative bunch, but the silence at the table this time was bordering on eerie. The meeting with the Elders was their first appointment of the day and it required the presence of the four of them, so they had breakfast together. For once, neither Crawford nor Nagi felt like eating anything, so both of them drank their coffee in awkward silence. Only Farfarello seemed totally at ease, undisturbed by the shifting dynamics in the interaction amongst his teammates. He was the only one devouring his bagels and drinking his milk with enviable appetite while Schuldig fought not to look at Crawford in any way and Nagi fought not to fall asleep and hit the table. Usually the telekinetic avoided caffeine, but today he looked like he really needed a fix.

They all were wearing white suits and lilac shirts. Ironic, being 'Schwarz', but Eszett was funny like that.

Crawford looked at his watch. He had even chosen a silver one to match the suit instead of that golden aberration he normally favored.

"It's time," he said. "Get ready."

Nagi forced himself to gulp the rest of his mug. Farfarello put an oversized last chunk of bagel in his mouth and Schuldig stood up without bothering to finish his coffee.

As Crawford had said, it was time.

\-------------

Nagi tried to keep his cool after he was finally allowed to sit in front of his computer. It was nearly midnight. He felt like crying. After the meeting with the Elders they had found out where the vessel was hidden, while managing to supervise the 'final adjustments' they had promised to conduct. Farfarello had been sent to get rid of the spies --Kritiker's agents were truly pathetic-- and, when the night had fallen, Nagi had been sent to trick Weiß into accepting an exchange neither of the sides had any intention of fulfilling.

All that meant that Nagi had now less than 24 hours to solve the riddle and avoid his doom.

_I never asked for this. Never._

Dead minds, all those normal people who wasted their lives whining and wailing about how uneventful their existences were, about how much their ordinary jobs bored them... they weren't aware of their good fortune.

Power sucked.

Nagi resumed his work from last night.

The faces were familiar to him, but Nagi couldn't place them. He selected the best frames he could find. The angle was obviously too high, so he corrected the perspective. He also adjusted the contrast and the sharpness, trying to define the main features. He eliminated the background and resized the pic so that its proportions matched the ones of the mugshots included in Rosenkreuz's profiles. He then ran a facial recognition program and waited for the results.

There were no matches.

Nagi frowned and modified the parameters to lower the threshold.

Still, no matches.

Nagi inhaled deeply. He then let the air out slowly. He pinched his lower lip.

_What now?_ he asked himself.

It was impossible. A telepath of this level outside of Rosenkreuz? A psychic this skilled, disciplined and clever, obviously trained and experienced in the field, coming from Austria, and it was not linked to the school? That was beyond preposterous, that was...

Nagi froze. The school.

_Stupid!_

He started the program to disguise his signal. He was going on-line.

Nagi had just remembered why that face had looked familiar. He knew one of the people on the videos. And he was pretty sure he could deduce who the other two were.

Nagi had the who. And maybe, just maybe, he could make an educated guess at the why. It still left a lot of questions unanswered, because he couldn't fathom how their actions were going to accomplish the objective Nagi would bet they had; Schwarz's plans wouldn't have been detrimental in any way, quite the contrary. In fact, how come they had gone to such lengths to erase them if their goal was the obvious?

Nagi frowned and entered Rosenkreuz's system again. He confirmed the identity of the three. He then started to dig in their backgrounds, their recent activities, their schedules, their funding, their ideology, their allies, their enemies. Everything he could find about them, anything to get rid of them and fast, before tomorrow night, before the ritual.

Suddenly, another name appeared on the screen. Nagi's blood froze in his veins. He searched a bit more. And more did he find.

_Oh my God, oh my God!!_

With clumsy, rushed movements, Nagi shut off the computers and tried to remember where the hell Schuldig was now.

\----------

It had been a while since the last time they had been together alone. Four days, if Schuldig remembered correctly. He had gone to great lengths to avoid the precog, and Crawford, magnanimous, generous Crawford had allowed it.

Crawford's refusal to know anything related to the tampering was driving Schuldig seven kinds of crazy. It was like dumping all the responsibility on his shoulders, like making him do Crawford's job. But without receiving his pay.

They had brought the girl to the medical facility as they should have a day ago. The specialists were checking her out now. Farfarello had gone already. Only Crawford and Schuldig remained. Maybe they should go home, too. The vessel was under their control. Sakura was under their control. If the current events were not... well, two out of three wasn't so bad.

If only...

/Crawford,/ Schuldig called, /let me undo the blocking./

The response was calm and immediate.

/No./

Schuldig felt the familiar heat of fury grow in his chest. Without his precognition, Crawford was as good as blind. Schwarz was as good as blind. Nagi still hadn't found out anything and they had less than 24 hours to solve this mess, or else...

Crawford was standing by the inner window that made the lab visible from the office they were in. Calm, unaffected. As always when they were alone.

/You think I'm enjoying this,/ he projected into Schuldig's head without averting his eyes from the window. /I'm not./

Schuldig felt frustrated enough to start pulling his hair anytime, now. He leaned on the wall instead and looked at Crawford's profile.

That had been probably the most personal thing Crawford had ever admitted to him. And he had just said it like that, as if he was talking about the fucking weather, or explaining that he took his coffee black, thank you.

And it was only then, and only because of that, that it began to dawn on Schuldig what this whole mess must look like from Crawford's perspective. Crawford, Rosenkreuz's golden boy. Crawford, the precognitive. Crawford, the control-freak. Someone who had been planning and plotting, since he was a boy, how to break free from the organizations that wanted to make use of his talent. Someone who had sacrificed absolutely everything --his pride, his honor, his personality, his tastes, his self-- to achieve that goal. Someone who trusted no one. Crawford, the paranoid. And when he was so close to accomplishing this self-imposed mission, this goal he had worked for all his life, when he could almost taste the freedom with the tip of his tongue, someone had taken it from him, and he couldn't even take action to get it back because he couldn't even remember what it was that had gone missing.

Schuldig couldn't even start to fathom how impotent a man like Crawford must have felt. How tied up. And still, here he was, standing tall, looking calmly out of the window as he forced himself not to know, when knowledge had always been the only thing that had truly belonged to him.

The thought nearly shook Schuldig: Crawford was putting a hell of a lot of trust in him. And that, knowing him, was probably the most difficult thing Crawford had ever done.

It would have never occurred to Schuldig if Nagi hadn't mentioned it before but, under all the tampering, Crawford was still Crawford. And he was counting on him to fix this disaster, to win this battle for him.

Schuldig's lips curved lopsidedly as he thought that even in the most awkward situations, even in the middle of their most horrible disagreements, there was something about Crawford's presence that was safe in its familiarity, that was better than the absence. He would cut off his own hand before reaching out to touch him ever again, but he could never stop looking at him, he'd sooner...

/SCHULDIG!!/

Fast as lightning, Schuldig turned, weapon in hand, knees flexed, mind ringing from the yell, eyes wide open in shock. What!? Wh--!

Crawford couldn't have heard, it hadn't been his mental voice, but he was alert, too.

Before his heart could calm down a little, Schuldig tried to process the fact that Nagi had materialized from thin air, that his mind hadn't neared his as much as suddenly popped in there. And that he had arrived shouting in his head as if the world was coming to an end. What the fuck, Schuldig was ready to believe it was.

/Nagi, where...? Have you...? Can you fucking _teleport_?!/ he asked when he understood.

/He can,/ Crawford replied, frowning. /But he shouldn't./

Schuldig's gaze went from Nagi to Crawford to Nagi again. He hadn't been aware he was holding a party-line. Nagi looked beyond distressed and exhausted. The kid was sweating profusely and hugging himself, nearly doubling over.

"Schuldig..."

"I'm going home," Crawford said, starting to walk towards the door. He paused for a second after grabbing the knob. "Tomorrow is the ritual. Don't be late."

And with that, he was gone.

\--------

"Farfarello, we need to talk."

The Irishman had agreed to enter Schuldig's mental room; the restraints the telepath put on his unstable mind made it look like Farfarello was in his straight jacket, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

"You've taken your sweet time, Mastermind."

There was some mockery in the use of the codename that Schuldig was in no mood to appreciate.

"You can't feel pain with your body. I could skip those defective nervous terminations of yours and give you a taste of what it's like to be in agony, if you want."

Farfarello smiled.

"Uuuuuh, scary."

Here, in his mental room, Schuldig held the upper hand. But that would get him no answers, because inside Schuldig's mind was not where they were, but in Farfarello's. Schuldig wasn't looking forward to taking a peek in there.

_A madman's mind was the last place a telepath wanted to be._

The perfect chamber of secrets. A maze full of traps with a gigantic 'Beware of the Dog' warning at the entrance. And the truth had been there, hidden, all the time. Protected by Farfarello's insanity and inner turmoil. What a clever hiding spot.

"What did they promise you, Farfarello?"

Schuldig knew that it wasn't wise to piss Farfarello off if he was going to enter his mind, but the words were out before he could stop the thought from forming. Damned mental room.

"Does it matter?"

"No, I guess not."

Schuldig walked nearer to the hanging figure.

"Will you let me in?" he asked.

"Not yet."

Farfarello's nonchalance was starting to get on his nerves.

"We're already running against the clock. This is not the time."

"It is, you'll have to trust me."

Schuldig snorted.

"Then enter," Farfarello said, "and face the consequences."

Schuldig glared at him. He was starting to be fed up with all the chatting about consequences, playing, getting burned and various shit he was getting lately. Everybody treated him as if it was for his own good that he was being kept in the dark, and nobody seemed to understand what was at stake for him, how serious all this was to be considered a fucking game.

The talk was over. Schuldig dissolved the meeting and prepared for war.

\--------

Schuldig entered Farfarello's room. He had asked Nagi to bind, gag and sedate the Irishman. There was some probability of Schuldig losing consciousness in the process and he didn't know which orders Farfarello had if a telepath were to search his mind. The drugs wouldn't do much to ease Schuldig's way --Farfarello had developed quite the tolerance already-- but they wouldn't hurt, either.

He had given Nagi very specific instructions. Schuldig had two hours. Crawford was in his bedroom, willingly blind, probably asleep. Farfarello glared at him with his only eye full of hatred, totally focused in spite of the sedatives.

Not less angry than he, Schuldig walked to him, knelt by his side, grabbed his hair and dove in.

Farfarello's mind was like Wonderland. Only with less White Rabbits and more Queens of Hearts. If Crawford structured his data to conform a futuristic city, made of identical blocks perfectly ordered and locked, and Schuldig structured his like a medieval village with his walls layered concentrically with the heaviest fortifications protecting the stronghold inside, Farfarello was just like the mix between a huge maze and the House of Horrors in an amusement park. Only, the dolls weren't made of resin and the blood wasn't syrup.

It was very difficult to know where one stood. Much more to know which path one had to follow. Farfarello's associations were chaotic at best, not leading to where one would expect; sometimes forking in the middle or looping into the same train of thought again and again.

He got deeper and deeper, knowing that he wasn't going to be able to track his way back in all this chaos. Weird religious imagery tinted thoughts about things that should have had nothing to do with it, like food, or impressions of the weather, or bladed weapons. But the worst was the urge to kill. It was everywhere, in every piece of data, in every fiber conforming the network, in every subconscious dream. It was like the blood was oozing down the walls, impregnating everything, sticking to the back of Schuldig's throat, pushing him to disembowel someone, anyone. It was gross.

There was a high-pitched scream. If Schuldig had been in his own body, it would have made the hairs of his arms stand. And he was a damned assassin by profession, for fuck's sake. It shouldn't affect him like that. It shouldn't affect him at all.

Going deeper and deeper, Schuldig fought to find the memories related to what was happening, the memories related to Lübeck.

\----------

Nagi checked the clock once again. Schuldig had said two hours, three at most. Two hours and three quarters had passed. It was a difficult decision. He needed the info, but he needed Schuldig, too. If the telepath fried his own brain trying, it wouldn't help matters to have two losses instead of one.

Schuldig had ordered him not to say anything to Crawford. Nagi was alone. It had been a very trying month. His had been a very trying life. It shouldn't be a novelty to have to take matters into his own hands. That was what he had been fighting for, after all. What he wanted to be able to do from tomorrow onwards. Forever.

Two hours, fifty minutes.

Nagi entered Farfarello's room. The two figures were immobile, Schuldig's hand gripping Farfarello's hair. Farfarello was bound and gagged, glaring angrily into Schuldig's eyes. They were nearly funny in that frozen state. Nearly.

The first step was putting distance between the two. Not too much, since Schuldig's mind had to be able to find his way into his own body. When Schuldig's fingers refused to let go of Farfarello's hair, Nagi made use of his telekinesis. He was good enough to loosen only millimetrically the grip by only millimeters, without forcing muscles and sinews or causing injury. He also used his talent to float Schuldig's body to the telepath's room. It looked truly ridiculous, because Schuldig kept the pose during the transportation. He set the body with care on the bed and went to fetch the pliers.

Schuldig had told him that the thing that most powerfully called someone's mind into their own bodies was pain. Pain was the natural alarm device to protect a living being and allow survival, so it demanded conscious attention and a general checking out of the whole system. Animal bodies' awareness was based on contrasts, though, so a repeated stimulus could lose effectiveness if it exhausted the nervous resources. For that reason, the pain couldn't always be caused in the same place with the same intensity and the same frequency. Contrast was the key.

Nagi breathed deeply and took Schuldig's left arm. The telepath was right-handed.

_Cuts and pricks are barely painful, especially when the weapon is sharp,_ Schuldig had said. _I really don't need a burning right now, or an incapacitating wound. The membrane that wraps the bones is fucking sensitive, but I don't want you near my bones, thank you. So I guess a bit of smashing will do the trick. Don't play with my joints, I want them to be functional tomorrow --hopefully forever. Don't overdo it. If it doesn't work at first, change the location or wait a minute and try again. Touch my face and I'll make you unable to say anything other than 'omelette du fromage' for the rest of your life._

He remembered the instructions well. He had decided not to use his talent for this. Not that he didn't trust his skill, but that way it would be impossible to apply too much force.

He caught a big chunk of flesh between the plier's jaws. He squeezed. Nothing happened. He squeezed harder. Nothing happened. He squeezed harder still. He was so grossed out that he had to stop and step back.

Nagi panted. There was an angry red mark on Schuldig's arm. Nagi shut his eyes tight and concentrated on breathing. This was beyond disgusting. He had twisted arms before, broken bones, smashed people, but this... this felt like torture. Torture of someone he knew. And maybe, just maybe, even liked. Schuldig was a bastard and more often than not he got on Nagi's nerves, but he was still the closest thing he had ever had to a... respected colleague. An ally.

_Precisely for that reason you owe this to him,_ he told himself.

He took the pliers again. He tried a bit higher. Nothing. And again. Nothing. And again.

Nagi was starting to panic. What if Schuldig was lost forever in Farfarello's mind? What would they do? They had less than 20 hours to the ritual. Crawford was out of this, Schuldig had left his own body and Farfarello was a traitor with a telepath trapped in his crazy mind. What would they do? What would Nagi do?

He went back to the first mark. Enough time had passed for the neurotransmitters to have been replenished. Schuldig hadn't specifically mentioned, but in Nagi's experience, when you fell on a fresh wound it hurt tenfold than what it had before. He squeezed the pliers. And again, this time harder. And again.

"Holy shit, fucking Mother of God...!" Schuldig murmured under his teeth. "Stop that already, you little son of a bitch!"

Nagi let the pliers fall and, for one embarrassing moment, he felt like hugging Schuldig.

"I appreciate the sentiment but no, thanks," Schuldig replied to the unsaid words while he stretched little by little into a more natural position.

"Schuldig..."

"I know everything," Schuldig whispered, but before Nagi could ask what that was or offer some painkillers, he fell asleep.

Nagi supposed that was for the best and let it be. He went to his own room and lay down, too. It was nearly dawn. One way or another, tomorrow everything would be over.


	31. 0

**0.**

The insistent droning of a very inconsiderate alarm clock woke Schuldig up. He had the worst hangover he had ever experienced, imagined or known of. His arm jerked in the general direction of the infernal device till it tumbled down the bedside table and fell. The blasted thing didn't shut up. Schuldig felt blindly for the cord and pulled with a vengeance till the alarm went silent. His left arm hurt. Everything hurt. His head... he was sure there was a better word for that, something definitely stronger than 'hurt'. It was as if his skull had shrunk and all the soft tissue inside had been trapped in its junctures. Or something like that.

He was aching in such a manner that it took him minutes to realize he wasn't alone. Seeing Nagi standing there brought all the memories back.

"We have to talk," Nagi said, offering Schuldig three pills and a glass of water.

Schuldig couldn't agree more. The pills were nothing fancy; he couldn't afford to have his mind clouded right now. The happy dwarves hammering his head from the inside would laugh at the paracetamol, ibuprofen and whatever that third pill was, but he swallowed them anyway, just in case.

"What time is it?" Schuldig asked, voice raspy and sluggish.

Nagi told him. Schuldig grunted.

They set to work.

\--------

"I shouldn't be here," Crawford said tonelessly.

Schuldig and Nagi exchanged glances. They had talked long and hard earlier, and they had both agreed that they couldn't do this without Crawford. Deep inside, Schuldig had the horrifying suspicion that what they had really agreed upon was that they wouldn't do this without Crawford, but right now wasn't the moment to play with semantics. It had been Crawford's plan from the very beginning. Going on without him meant having to kill him. In Schuldig's personal scale of wrong, that actually ranked pretty high. He didn't want to think if their chances, Nagi and Schuldig's chances, were much higher one way or another. And that refusal to analyze and choose based on survival was what he found so horrifying about it. But the fact was that they had reached an agreement and there was no more time to back out of it.

So they were there, in Schuldig's mental room, barely five hours prior the ceremony, white suits reflecting the clothes they were wearing in the physical plane, ready to gamble everything on the chance that Crawford hadn't been secretly manipulated into an unexpected reaction after knowing the truth. On the chance that he was still him.

"We have no other choice, Crawford," Schuldig said. "We think we have all the pieces of the puzzle, and that we know how to complete it and get away alive."

Crawford looked at him, pensive. He had trusted Schuldig till now, there was no reason why he should refuse to now. His thoughts didn't slip the way Nagi's sometimes did here, so Schuldig waited for his answer.

"Alright," Crawford finally said, "tell me what's been going on."

Schuldig started from the very beginning. Crawford showed no emotion when he discovered he was a traitor, planning the biggest betrayal of Eszett from the very start of his stay at Rosenkreuz, when Eszett hadn't been more than the fragment of a vision about a tower twenty years in the future.

Schuldig continued with the events from the past month, how the Elders had requested that Crawford meet them in their headquarters in Switzerland and how Schuldig had shielded his thoughts to make their plans of treason invisible to telepathic prying. And how those memories hadn't been there to uncover when he had come back.

Crawford listened in silence, only the gleam of his eyes revealing he was reacting to the story. Everything started to make sense, now.

"Who." he asked in that understated way of his when the story was reaching his conclusion.

"The 'who' is linked to the 'why'," Schuldig replied cryptically. "Who would want to erase our plans from only _your_ memory without giving us all away to Eszett? Why would anyone do that?"

"A formidable team of excellent psychics," Nagi reminded him, "precognition, telepathy, probably a kinetic, too. Any rival team that good would want to see us dead and gone, humiliated, fallen from grace before stepping in our place. But this was not a field team, or the facial recognition program would have found a match with Rosenkreuz's profiles."

"At first," Schuldig took the baton, "we thought that this super-team was plotting against us, erasing our plans, blocking your precognition... we didn't stop to think of an alternative. It didn't occur to us that maybe they were trying to protect our plans from the Elder's prying, that they might fear, or maybe even know for a fact, that my shields would be spotted and removed that day and Schwarz would be caught and executed. They didn't want to destroy us. They wanted Schwarz to succeed. They wanted us to kill the Elders without anyone suspecting they had had a hand in it."

Schuldig fell silent. Crawford was capable of connecting the dots all alone. Who would benefit from the Elders' demise? With the ritual's failure and Eszett headless there would be a war for the power of the secret organization. And someone was ambitious enough to have orchestrated this gigantic circus with the certainty of ending up the winner of that war.

"Rosenkreuz," Crawford finally said.

"Rosenkreuz," Nagi confirmed. "I recognized the head of the Kinetic Department in the video of the airport. It didn't take long to put a name to the other two faces. The head of Telepathy and the head of Precognition. Kapoor, Lübeck and Gunnlaugsdóttir. The next Elders of Eszett. Their profiles weren't archived with the ones of the field teams since teaching structure was kept separately from the graduated students. But there was still information about them. Very revealing information."

Crawford waited in silence for them to elaborate.

"Do you know why I am so sure of what we are telling you, Crawford?" Schuldig asked. "How I knew this is not a crazy conspiracy theory based on very circumstantial conjectures? How have we found out their motivation and not only their actions?"

"I discovered some odd coincidences while I was digging for information about Rosenkreuz's headmasters," Nagi explained. "Why do you think Farfarello was taught Japanese?"

Crawford's eyes widened at that. Schuldig was most satisfied that he finally showed he was human.

"Farfarello was their contact, making it easy for them to monitor us even from Austria," Schuldig confirmed. "He was already theirs before you even knew of him. He has been under Lübeck's wing all this time. There are multiple registers of that. I've been in his mind. They've been playing us from the very beginning. They made you choose Farfarello, either with telepathic suggestions or making him the best candidate; probably both. I wouldn't discard the idea of them having instilled in us the spirit of rebellion. From the very, very beginning."

Schuldig didn't say anything about his suspicions of Lübeck being the one wiping out his mind completely when he was no more than a child. It was not Schwarz's business.

"So," Nagi said, "what do we do now?"

Without apparent effort, even being inside other person's mental room, Crawford summoned a table and three chairs. He took a seat and gestured the other two to do the same. He pressed the fingertips of his hands together.

"Nothing," Crawford said impassively, "we'll do nothing."

Before what remained of his team could flip, he continued.

"Our goals are fairly similar, manipulated or not. We will kill the Elders for them. Then, we will die horribly when the tower crumbles down and falls to the sea."

"What about Farfarello?" Schuldig hadn't forgiven him yet; his headache hadn't subsided in the least.

"He will, too. The debris will leave us unconscious and the water will do the rest."

"Will they fall for it?" Nagi asked, hesitant.

Crawford took a couple of seconds to reply.

"No, but they won't care one way or another. They'll have what they were after, we'll have what we wanted. We won't get in their way and it will be far easier for them to tell everybody that the traitors were dead than to start a chase that will deplete their resources and could lead us to talk. Not that it would be such a threatening perspective for them, but it's still far more troublesome than to spit on our graves and move on. Most probably this has always been part of their plan. They'll let us out, and that's what should matter."

Schuldig suppressed a smile. He knew it had to sting to Crawford to know that he had been outmaneuvered. That he was not the best. But still, Crawford would always leave his pride behind when it didn't benefit him. Like now.

"We will need transportation. Pack the essential, we have to leave the country. Schuldig, as soon as we're out I need you to remove my blocking..."

"Sure."

"...and you, Nagi, will be in charge of the demolition. If you can't bring us safely ashore, let us know, we can still think of something more convenient than swimming."

"Yes, sir."

Of course, Schuldig thought. Swimming was sooooo vulgar...!

Crawford looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Schuldig always forgot that thoughts were easy to let slip in the mental room, even if the mental room was his.

"Schuldig, isolate Farfarello's mind from telepathic interference. I doubt they're in Japan right now, ruining their alibis, but better safe than sorry. Convince him that we are following their masters' orders as planned. Don't get in his head. Nagi, find suitable corpses and arrange the deformations to make them hard to identify. If we're lucky, the new Elders will be grateful enough to deny the requests for dental profiles or DNA tests. And about the ritual..."

"Maybe I can help with this," Schuldig said, before talking to Crawford about Sakura and Weiß.

"Alright," Crawford agreed. "So that's all. We have four hours to prepare everything. Let's get to work."

\---------

Expecting something didn't always prepare you for it. So, when, in the middle of their final battle with Weiß, the floor gave way under him, Schuldig wondered if that was what Crawford was feeling all the time. Then he fell. And that was that.

\---------

In the end, they had had to swim. Four hours hadn't been enough time to find a classier solution.

Barefoot, dirty, and soaked wet, Schuldig didn't complain. They were free. He watched the place where the tower had stood. A new day was dawning. How poetic.

Nagi had passed out after crumbling the tower, protecting them from the debris and flying them half-way to the shore. With the little sleep, little food and enormous workload he had been bearing last week, Schuldig was ready to assign him the label of 'his new god'. The wonder was that the kid wasn't dead. Schuldig started to think that, with that kind of power, it was nearly impossible that either Rosenkreuz or Eszett were going to allow the kid to run free. Especially since they were undergoing such a fusion and the new leaders knew so much about him. About Schwarz. About everything. On the other hand, it also meant they had a chance against them. And, to be honest, Schuldig couldn't deny that he was dying to kick their arrogant asses. But he had already decided to leave Schwarz and search for a life of his own, so the ass-kicking would have to wait. He was fed up. Fed up and exhausted.

He sensed Crawford getting near. Maybe it was the soft murmur of the sand, maybe a movement caught through the corner of his eye. Nagi was probably lying on the beach, a few meters behind him. Schuldig didn't bother to turn to see. Just like he didn't turn when Crawford reached him.

They both looked at the horizon. The sun was about to rise. Without a word, Crawford raised a hand and, still looking at the distance, he touched Schuldig's back.

Schuldig sighed when he felt the fingers slowly climbing up his back. Crawford's hand was cold. It crept under the wet, tangled hair and cupped Schuldig's nape. Schuldig frowned and opened his mouth to give Crawford a piece of his mind, but Crawford chose that moment to kiss him. It was totally unfair that it felt so good. Crawford's other hand touched his cheek and Schuldig kissed back, but kept his hands balled into fists at his side.

Very slowly, Crawford let the kiss die and pulled away.

"Who's playing now, Crawford?" Schuldig asked when Crawford's hands let him go. The man had lost his glasses, but his gaze was as intense and focused as ever.

"I'm the kind of man who is ready to face the consequences," he said.

"How cool of you. Congratulations." Schuldig turned and started to walk away. He would wait in the car. And after that, they would go their separate ways. He didn't mind who would take care of Nagi till he recovered, he just wanted to get away from Crawford. At hearing his voice, though, he paused.

"I'll let you break my heart if you're able to find it."

Schuldig pressed his lips together and tried to think. It was...

...the kind of dare he would kill to have thrown at him.

...the corniest thing he had ever heard.

...too late.

"Maybe I'm the kind of man who is never ready to face the consequences, Crawford. Maybe I've gotten tired of getting burned."

"But that won't stop you from playing. It never has. That is the kind of man you are."

Schuldig was too tired to get angry anymore. He turned to Crawford.

"Face this," Schuldig said, flipping him off.

And then, he walked away.


	32. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

His cell phone rang. He was busy packing, so Schuldig didn't remember at first where he had left it. He actually regretted having to leave; Spain was a nice country, even if people couldn't stop shouting instead of talking regardless of the hour of the day or night. Maybe he would go to Italy next. They said that once you mastered a romance language it didn't take much to learn the rest.

"¿Diga?" he said when he finally located the phone. The number on the display was unknown. It wouldn't be the first time a grannie made a mistake and started telling him her life before Schuldig could explain she had gotten the wrong number.

"I've always found the Spanish way to answer the phone extremely rude," Crawford's voice sounded moderately amused. Schuldig froze.

"How did you get this number?" he asked.

"I 'saw' myself dialing it."

"Hn, handy."

"Yes."

Schuldig didn't reply. He just put the phone in the cradle of his shoulder and kept on packing.

"I also 'saw' us together some years from now," Crawford's voice went on.

"Oh, so now we are fated? Is that your point?"

The socks. He couldn't forget the socks. He was always having to buy new pairs every time he changed places.

"It's not my point," Crawford assured, "it's the future."

"I see. Anything remarkable about that future of ours?"

Crawford seemed to think about it.

"There will be no improvement in either of our fashion senses."

Schuldig paused at that. For some strange reason, that had reached him more than any promise of taking over the world would. Maybe it was the little glimpse of reality it implied, or the lack of usefulness, which made it so different from Crawford's usual bullshit. Either he wasn't really trying, or Crawford had been fine-tuning his manipulating skills to have him like that.

"And," Schuldig couldn't help asking, "will we be playing with fire?"

"That's what we do, Schuldig."

"Will we get burned?" Both knew that Schuldig's 'we' was more a royal one than a real interest for their mutual emotional well-being.

"More literally than you know."

Schuldig sighed.

"Why are you calling, Crawford."

Crawford's voice didn't hesitate. It was probable that the man didn't even understand the concept.

"Because I'm offering to kiss it better afterwards."

Schuldig hung up and dropped the phone on the bed as if it was on fire. Not because he was angry, but because he was scared. Crawford was... crossing a line. It was never personal between them, neither of them wanted it to be. It was not because of that that he had left, so it made no sense that he would make it a reason to come back. He had only wanted not to be played, to be...

The sound of the doorbell interrupted this thoughts. In all the time he had spent in this apartment he hadn't heard it even once. He hadn't known what it sounded like.

Knowing beforehand who it was, Schuldig couldn't understand why he opened the door. When he saw Crawford, he tried to slam it shut again in his face. Crawford, be it precognition or sheer common sense, saw it coming and used his foot to prevent the door from closing.

They struggled briefly to obtain the power over the door, but Crawford's heavier weight gave him the advantage and he managed to be inside the apartment when the door finally closed again.

Schuldig turned his back on him and went to his packing, but Crawford grabbed his arm and yanked, forcing Schuldig to face him. Schuldig didn't appreciate the manhandling and punched Crawford in the stomach. He froze for a second when he noticed that the punch had hit home, Crawford doubling over a bit.

The precog hadn't let go of his arm. He hadn't made a sound at receiving the blow and he didn't make a sound either when he yanked again and kissed Schuldig.

Schuldig hit him again, and again Crawford allowed it. It bewildered the telepath. That was new and certainly unexpected. He got vertigo just to think about the myriad of possible reasons Crawford could have to act this way. Vertigo trying to second-guess and third-guess him, to get where the catch was this time and how he should respond to it.

Crawford kissed him again.

Schuldig closed his eyes and just let go. He had nearly forgotten how much he had missed that vertigo. How much he had missed Crawford. How much he wanted him.

Their kisses became heated and their hands began to roam on each other's bodies. They stumbled until Crawford found a wall and pressed Schuldig against it.

Nobody drove Schuldig as absolutely crazy with the frustration of not being able to understand him like Crawford. Everybody else was plain and simple. Everybody else was easy to manipulate. Easy to leave. Easy to please. Easy to break.

"Someday..." Schuldig said between kisses, "I'll kill you.."

"Yes..."

Schuldig arched his back and threw his head back as Crawford mouthed his neck.

"I hate it when you humor me."

Crawford's hands went down Schuldig's back to his ass.

"Yes," he breathed against Schuldig's throat.

The telepath considered punching Crawford again, but it was just too odd the way the man was accepting the blows when he could have easily ducked or deflected them. And if Schuldig were to be honest with himself, a fist fight wasn't very high on his list of priorities right now, not with Crawford's hands on his ass and Crawford's mouth on his neck and Crawford's body in his arms.

Pulling Crawford's hair to kiss him, Schuldig surrendered.

\-------

It had been a while since Schuldig last stared at a ceiling. And the one of the hall, no less. He had never had a reason to look up in that particular part of the apartment. Not till now.

Thankfully, it was a big hall, otherwise it wouldn't have the capacity to fit their supine bodies, heads at the same level, feet sprawled looking in opposite directions, pieces of clothing strewn around, still on, or in an intermediate state.

For example, Crawford's shirt was partly on, partly off. Schuldig knew without looking because he had a portion of it in his grasp. For some reason, his fingers had closed on it. Just like Crawford's fingers had closed on a lock of Schuldig's hair. It wasn't as if they were touching, they were not. Neither the shirt nor the hair had nerve endings. It wasn't touching if the other person couldn't really feel it, if it wasn't an alive part of them.

"Hey..." Schuldig drawled lazily, "will we ever fuck in a damned bed?"

The floor was parquet, not as uncomfortable as it could have been.

"...Not that I've foreseen."

Schuldig frowned.

"That's... that's..." he struggled for words, "...weird."

"Hm-hn," Crawford hummed non-commitally.

Schuldig didn't feel the urge to kiss him now. After all, he could do it tomorrow, or the day after that. With that thought, he fell asleep.

  
  
**THE END**


End file.
